Ars Moriendi
by vanilladoubleshot
Summary: Edward and Bella thought they would have forever. Instead, Edward is teaching Bella a ghostly lesson in ars moriendi... "the art of dying." AU; mixed POV; lemons; MCD at onset. Some mild/dream-state DubCon.
1. extraho

**Detailed Background: **This is neither AU/AH nor vamp!AU; Edward lived a human life until the age of seventeen – current to the start of the story – when, upon his sudden death, he became an incubus. In the lore of this story, incubi are ghostly creatures who feed via performing sexual acts on their sleeping victims, slowly leeching them of their life essence (to the point of death, if repeated feedings occur from the same individual with no regard to their failing health). He has no memories of his human life at the onset of his "life" as an incubus.

**Author's Note: **Updates may be sporadic, but given the topic and form of this story, I'm sure you all can forgive the time it takes for me to write concisely and in the proper tone to give you something that I am proud of and feel is worth your valued readership. Please, let me know your thoughts and reactions in a review or PM.

For Stella Luna Sky, Le Moulin, doitforyou, and windtrails. Because… we can't stop eating.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership to any publicly recognizable entities, including Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series and its characters.

* * *

**Ars Moriendi  
**

You're cold, and sense that you should be able to see your breath in the chill dew air of the early morning, sun not yet rising pink in a haze of chromium over the lush wet trees of the Hum, but it seems that you're not breathing.

You don't mind.

Breath would be detrimental; alert the girl in the bed to your task, to your want, to the heady dark need between your legs that you don't care might hurt her.

You're hovering outside her window, weightless and flightless, incorporeal, a spectre of shame and shadow and wet mouth and stiff skin and you're not skin at all, you're a cloud like glass after a bullet pierces and shatters it into the night. You're staring at her. You're hungry.

Her sleep is not peaceful, and neither are you; your need is all-consuming, hard and lascivious and painful and you want the warmth at the apex of her thighs to give you the life, the sustenance, the salvation you crave, and the want is a need.

She's moving. Her curly cinnamon-brown hair splays against the pink pillows.

Her legs work like an eggbeater beneath the sheets, and the dully aching hunger you've known since birth – the only life you remember, though you're not newborn, not really; you're not a child, with these urges – blossoms into a fiery need.

You can feel the dark venom pulsing through you; collecting on your fingertips, coating your tongue, ready to burst from your private places… everywhere that will touch the girl with a birthmark behind one tan knee.

You want to trace its Rorschach inkblot shape with your tongue and show her its true meaning.

- - - - -

I sank, comatose but unable to sleep, into my mattress. It felt cold without his welcome heat beside me. He had been here only last night.

He had been alive only last night.

He had been warm and young and beautiful when he held me, smelling saline and earthy from his clandestine climb up to my window for our nightly secret rendezvous. His affections were a movie playing across the ocean of his eyes: the seventeen-year-cicada's song, the bugs themselves older than he and their song ancient as love itself, was the soundtrack. In his green eyes it was clear that the scene was grand, swelling strings and fireworks and his leading lady done up in burgundy velvet and filmy petticoats.

I rolled half-heartedly onto my side and clutched close the pillow on which his head had last lain. His smell, like honey and sunlight and beautiful manliness, filled my nose.

_Edward was gone_.

- - - - -

You melt through the frost-tipped glass of her window –

Surprise: a new emotion. You were not able to do that before, you don't think; but of course not, you didn't exist before tonight…

_window._

Your hunger inflames, rising and roiling in a dark thrush of what should have been blood, should have made you blush, but you have no shame and no fear and no affection for this morsel of warmth in the nondescript pink bed, set in a sea of nondescript pink carpeting.

She is sound asleep but stirring, rocking herself to the dream your presence puts into her head, her hands with small stub fingers like snouts rubbing circles into her flat breasts, churning legs open and the pink fabric between dark and wet through.

Your cold lips turn up into a smile as you glide towards the dreary pink bed and satisfactory warm flesh, feet never touching the floor.

- - - - -

_Edward was lithe as a mountain lion when he pounced from the wide-open windowsill to the floor. He landed softly on the balls of his feet, as he did every night; he kicked off his shoes and tumbled into Bella's bed._

_"You're early!" She laughed delightedly. His legs tangled with hers beneath the sheets as he pulled her closer to press every line of their bodies together._

_"Mmm," he groaned softly into the crook of her neck. "I wanted to have more time with you tonight."_

_Bella rolled over, slid her arms around his lean waist and felt his heartbeat thrumming life through him. She had no idea that life would only spark inside him for another few hours. Had she known, she would have been paralyzed with heartbreak._

_"I'm glad," she whispered._

_Edward touched his forehead to Bella's gently. "Someday, we'll be together all through the night." His voice was velvet in her ears. "We'll fall asleep together in a big white bed and I'll wake up with you in my arms."_

_And he kissed her, slow and sweet, like honey pouring from a spoon. When Edward kissed Bella, he wasn't doing anything else. She was his whole universe, and the moment was eternal because he didn't have any plans. Neither of them thought he was going anywhere. Just kissing Edward… it was overwhelming._

_He left her when the sky outside was pink._

- - - - -

I glanced out my open window – a habit that I never wanted to break, because it felt like all I had left of Edward – at the purple-gray dawn sky, the color of twilight, like I was living in eternal night. He was my moonlight, pulling at my tides and directing my gravity, the point around which I faithfully circled, and had been for as long as I had been alive.

_alive._

It was an aneurism, Esme said, her voice so flat I knew it had to be true, on the phone this morning when Edward's silver Volvo didn't roll into its spot in my driveway. The medical examiner surmised it had been dormant for years, silently threatening the beautiful boy like the point of a knife, provoked to striking by some innocuous startling – a sneeze, a hacking cough, a knock on the head.

His pretty twin sister found him broken beneath his half-open window, a bruise on his brow like he'd hit it sneaking back inside.

- - - - -

_"Mmm," Bella moaned softly, writhing beneath him, his air-chilled hands beneath the t-shirt she wore as a nightgown, teasing at her small, pointed breasts. "Edward… please…"_

_He shuddered and kissed the hollow beneath her ear, all breath and life and pulse meeting pulse. "Not here," he whispered, one hand trailing down to ghost over her white panties. "Not with your dad sleeping in the next room. And not when I have to leave you after."_

_"But I'm ok with that!" Bella insisted, her hand mirroring his trail, slipping under the waistband of his crinkly new jeans, resting over burgundy briefs hiding the skin she'd only recently first seen. "Edward, you know that I understand that your leaving doesn't mean you don't love me. I need you. I want you. Right now."_

_Edward exhaled through his nose sharply when her small hand squeezed, and Bella heard him swallow: a hopeful sound. His fingers tapped softly over the sensitive curve only he had ever seen – that they were both certain only he would ever see – like she was the cream ivory keys of his piano, and he could draw the lullaby from her with the smallest effort._

_"No," he whispered softly, finally, honestly. "I do love you. And I do need you. And I do so, so want you." He kissed her face then – softly – finally – honestly. "I will only treat you the way you deserve. I can't take this experience from you and disappear into the night. I could never live with myself."_

- - - - -

You groan richly in half-sated, half-wet, all-carnal, half-satanic satisfaction at the first stiff sinking into the curly-haired girl's bare red center. She is flora like rosehips and sour like grapefruit and fauna like all prey: game and lurch and flight.

You drink deeply, aware that your mouth is not doing the sucking and it instinctively unnerves you, though you're unsure whose instincts would go against your own in your mind, but you busy your mouth against her breast – too hard, too big, too burnt from a UV lamp – but find it almost as satisfying as the nectar you're stealing below; when you suckle here, you can taste the metallic tang of blood, but you don't mind it.

You raise your head to lick your lips clean, catch sight of yourself in the mirror of her frosted window: bronze hair, white skin – not skin, you remind yourself, seeing through your own reflection – empty eyes glowing green like cursed jade.

You frown, and you're not sure why.

The body beneath you tightens and arches, taking pleasure from your tangible darkness, not knowing what you're taking from her – life and energy and soul; if you feed from her again, she'll grow weaker still, but the sour pungent odor of her tainted identity is overwhelming the aroma that called only because you were starving and frail, and you know you won't want from her again –

But she's good enough this once, and your hips roll harder, taking in her essence and enjoying the ride, and just before you come in a great implosion of frenzied drink taking in a great gulp from between her tan legs, you glance in the window's reflection again and see through your eyes to the sign on the door behind you:

_jessica's room._


	2. da mihi basia mille

This chapter, very literally, would not have happened without the support of **Vixen1836**. Thank you.

**doitforyou** is beautiful and started a thread for "Ars Moriendi" at Twilighted. Once my account there is verified, I'll be posting in it and titillating with teasers. **www(dot)twilighted(dot)net(slash)forum(slash)viewtopic(dot)php?f=44(ampersand)t=4648(ampersand)p=523171#p523171**

**"Bare"** by **stella luna sky** is unbearably beautiful and everyone should read it. I also have two one-shots on my profile; one for the **Age of Edward** contest.

Pimpage now complete for this go-around.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership to any publicly recognizable entities, including Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series and its characters.

* * *

**da mihi basia mille**

_Carlisle Cullen knocked on the pale green-painted door softly, careful not to startle the two sleeping soft bundles cuddled in his wife's arms, as the young couple stood side-by-side beneath his black umbrella, hiding from the rain._

_The door opened to soft loving light, a wide grin, and a bushy mustache._

_"Charlie!" breathed Esme, trying to convey her excitement over the all-too-briefly silent heads of her infant twins, sounding almost winded as the two men clasped their arms around each other. "Congratulations! How is Renee? And Bella?"_

_At the sound of his new daughter's name, the mustached Charlie's grin grew wider still, looking like it was almost capable of breaking free of his handsome face and filling the entire room; he ushered his tired friends and their waking new lives into the small, clean home._

_"They're beautiful," he answered._

_One of the blankets in Esme's arms mewled, and she chicked her tongue down at the little face, sympathetic and concerned and born to be a mother. "Mary Alice," she cooed, letting her husband scoop the second, still-sleeping, baby from the crook of her arm. "Mary Alice, Mary Alice, what is wrong?"_

_The tiny face screwed up tight and let loose a banshee wail, and Esme looked up frantically, hoping not to have surprised Renee or startled the little stranger Bella. Only Charlie, Carlisle, and little Edward looked on; she was surprised to see Edward's green eyes open and staring at her face instead of his loud twin, but then Edward was such a curiously serious baby._

- - - - -

Across from the crosswalk twenty feet to my right where everyone in town was darting from the rain, high schoolers were playing hooky from their fast-food jobs with chipped nail polish clutching surreptitious hip-flasks and jobless Maytag Men wandering together with wrinkled Newport cigarettes glowing red beneath salt-and-pepper beards.

Mary Alice had dyed her hair black since the summer before sixth grade; not to be a "rebel" or anything so ordinary, but because with a halo of firebright bronze, she was so much "Edward's twin sister," and with an inky shock of black, she had come into her own as Alice.

I wondered if she would let her hair grow back in now.

She was inconsolable.

We sat on the cement block wall outside the Weber Funeral Home, the granite and seashell and putty crumbling and uncomfortable beneath our black tights, snagging them and making them run, but for once, Alice was as uncaring as I.

In our black dresses we could have been the sisters we would now never be; her head rested in my lap.

I combed her soft hair with my fingers absently as I had done to her twin so many times before… Edward and I had been in love for as long as I could remember; Edward always swore it was longer even than that, a silly fable his mother Esme perpetuated with retellings of the first time we met as tiny babies.

The service had been lovely: the perfect funeral for a popular, good, loved young man, but so unlike what I always thought of as being 'Edward'. The whole of Forks High turned out to say goodbye, maybe all of Forks – there wasn't much difference – and while the warm arms of the village that helped to raise this lost child held Alice and Esme and Carlisle and me now, Edward had never needed that bolstering, preferring the intimate embrace of the few.

Girls he persistently rejected were crying for him in the bathroom stalls (again, as always, but now for the last time). I had vomited nothing and held myself above the wooden toilet seat, listening to their chattering sniffles and feeling as empty as the porcelain bowl…

"God, Jess." Only Lauren Mallory would take the lord's name in vein at a funeral in a Presbyterian house of the dead – "You look awful. You look worse than Bella… and she looks worse than usual."

"Really, Lau? You can't give her a break today?"

Jessica was shallow and callous but never mean; her voice sounded groggy as though she'd been crying more than warranted or suffered a bad headcold. I lifted my head and listened to her voice creak through her teeth and thought of old phonographs churning rustily away in a haunted attic somewhere, all ghost stories and transient lovers and slow death from consumption.

"Alright, fine, Jesus." Lauren sounded the same as always, too much blonde sunshine for a black day shrouded in rain. "But seriously, bebe, you look like cow pie."

"I feel like it," commiserated Jess, and I believed it from her ancient tone. "I don't know why. I slept really well. But I just feel, like, groggy? And sore." She sighed wetly. "Maybe it's karma."

"That bitch? Why?"

"I dreamt of Edward last night." She sounded puzzled. "But I can't quite remember his face." She laughed once, sadly, through her rhinoplasty nose. "He's been dead for a day and I can't remember his face. Is that weird?"

Lauren laughed richly and I hated her. "I dunno, but it's a pity. It was _such_ a fuckworthy face."

Not caring now if they were alerted to my presence, I turned back to the rainforest wood in front of me and retched up the image of beautiful alive Edward in the bed or arms or legs or dreams of another woman.

- - - - -

The sunlight hurts you as it streams in small patches through the leafy overgrown canopy dripping dew into your hair – was it really hair? – and onto your shoulders as you race through the forest, skimming over the ground and skirting around trunks and terrifying animals in your wake as you try fruitlessly to evade the burning afternoon light.

When it hits your skin you shatter and it looks to your eyes like the facets of a diamond but feels like a bomb's gone off inside where your bones used to be and the first time the sunshine burnt you it broke your heart for reasons you don't know, and you retreated further into the darkness.

The aching hunger is already returning and you can smell delicious female smells all over the forest – doe and sow and lioness; red berries and birthing blood and sinewy confidence – but you can't find an appetite for them, they frighten you still as much as you frighten them; you cringe past a doe to find shade and she leaps away from you in startled tripping grace, casting you a wide-eyed innocent glance with big brown eyes and you stop.

Just for a moment.

_big brown eyes_

But the sun is a fiend and finds you again and the scream rips from your throat without rustling a leaf – the tree in the forest falling without a sound – and you're off again, escaping the light and seeking the darkness, craving and craving and craving and you need to feed and there's no one to be had and your hands find yourself, desperately stroking, like trying to swallow air for sustenance –

And you see it.

There, just beyond the edge of the forest, three houses lined up in a row; you can hear from the trees that they're vacant and devoid of heartbeat but the delicious aromas lingering around them makes you release uncomfortably, sucking greedily on emptiness.

There are four lingering female scents; two comforting and similar and you want to roll around in them and savor the aroma but they don't spark your hunger and for some reason you're glad; but the other two…

You wish you had better control of yourself and your senses and the world and that you could follow the trails and track down the pink that you want right now because they're both delicious but one is sweeter and it sings to you like it's your very own private own lullaby and you're being lured to your execution with milk and honey and freesia and it's dappled over all three houses and you're so frustrated that the scream feels good as you brave the brightsparkle burn of the wretched sunlight to dash across the dying green lawn, taking refuge beneath the white weathered porch of the largest house, drowning in the teasing pussy scent and finding strange solace in the shelter.

- - - - -

_Esme offered Mary Alice the soft end of a pacifier, but the little girl only cried around it, her pink face growing sweaty with misery._

_Edward's brow furrowed, eyes still trained on his mother's face. Waiting._

_Esme looked to Carlisle. He smiled and held out his arms. "Little girl just wants her daddy," he chuckled, and took the pink bundle into his arms, quieting her immediately. The round little face pressed into his chest at the sound of daddy's laugh and Carlisle's eyes twinkled. "Right, Charlie?"_

_Charlie flushed and nodded, looking more excited than a mustached man in uniform had right to be. "Yes, sir, Doc Cullen," he said jovially, winding an arm around the shoulders of his tired-looking wife, who had just padded down the stairs, bundle of her own in her arms stirring its blankets into a froth of white eyelet lace around her tiny face like a bridal veil._

_"Oh," sighed Esme, shifting her stoic son in her arms to approach Renee and her baby. "Renee, you look wonderful."_

- - - - -

I spoke the final eulogy, even after Alice and Carlisle and Esme. I didn't know what to say; Edward left me behind as his forever-betrothed virgin bride, because I could feel in the dark tar settling of my bones that there would never be anyone else for me, and a part of me resented him for it; I hated being the center of attention and I hated him for that, too. I kept searching the faces of the silent crowd for his beautiful grin, forgetting that he would never smile at me again.

I couldn't distill my love for him into a speech I was willing to let Jessica and Lauren and the lunch ladies and librarians hear, so I summed it up in the tale of our first kiss; I knew they would laugh and I would be relieved their pitying stares, because small towns are so shallow to fall for such a tack.

The first real memory I had of Edward, we were playing at the heel of his white wraparound porch – Edward and Alice and Jasper and me all tumbling around together in the bright sunshine with some kittens Carlisle had found two weeks before living under the porch in the dark cool safety net of the Cullen home.

I think Edward and Alice and I were three, making Jasper four years old and superior; he was the big blond boy who lived on the Cullens' other side with his big blonde Amazonian mother Rosalie just turning twenty and already I knew to be jealous that Jasper still had a mother but to notice the difference between Rosalie's youth and Esme's age.

The Cullens kept the kittens until they were old enough to be weaned, no longer needing to suckle their mother's milk beneath the porch.

Then, for about a week, the Cullen kids and Jasper and me were the most popular preschoolers in Forks as those tiny calico cats became a commodity.

I still had never cried so much as I did the first day I showed up to the Cullen house and those kittens were gone.

I still had yet to cry for Edward.

But when the kittens were still there and needy and living under their porch, Edward first kissed me.

Mary Alice still had bright red hair and she refused to wear anything but dresses and tutus; that day she'd strung a long necklace of costume pearls around her neck and clomped outside in her mother's high heels and a red tartan slip; she was already infatuated with Jasper and Esme pulled her aside twice to chastise her gently, declaring that good girls didn't show little boys their underpants.

Jasper was somewhat traumatized as he always was by Mary Alice's intense attention, and he sat on Emmett's knee looking forlorn and drinking lemonade as Rosalie kissed his little blond head and promised that someday he wouldn't be so scared of girls.

I remember that Emmett laughed, "I dunno, he might do well to be always scared of Mary Alice," and Rosalie slapped him on the back of the head.

I was thrilled that Edward and I had the kittens to ourselves for a few minutes and I sat still as a stone as they crawled all over me, all life and softness and tickly fur and tiny claws and small mewling sounds that made me giggle and then Edward was kneeling in front of me, little ginger-haired cat in his hands that matched his head, and he surveyed me with such seriousness as I'd never before seen in my short life.

And he set the little ginger kitten in my lap.

And he put his grubby hands on my cheeks.

And he kissed me.

I knew kisses from _The Little Mermaid_ and from seeing Rosalie and Emmett once in the kitchen as they watched us all while Charlie worked and the Cullens got away from the world for a while; Rosalie stirred up some macaroni'n'franks and her hands were covered in orange cheese powder and her hair was a mess around her face and Emmett came up behind her, a burly nineteen-year-old mechanic, and spun her around with his meaty hands on her hips, and he kissed her.

Then the kittens were clawing and crawling again and Edward was grinning with his green eyes twinkling and I set the gray runt of the litter on his shoulder and watched it scrabble its way across his frame.

Alice was wailing up on the porch as Esme dragged her inside to put on a romper suit and Jasper was wailing that he hated girls' underpants and Emmett's roar of a laugh scared the kittens into shooting out their tiny claws and pricking me all over.

Edward just grinned at me, and didn't kiss me on the mouth again for a decade.

- - - - -

_Renee smiled, carefully rearranging the white receiving blanket away from Bella's little nose and mouth. "Thank you. I feel exhausted," she joked, and both women laughed softly. Bella snuffled once, a small whimpering sound, and Edward wriggled in Esme's arms._

_"Oh, Edward," cooed Esme. "Do you want to meet Bella, too?"_

- - - - -

You cower beneath the whitewashed wood of the large house's porch, starving and shaking and desperate, watching the light fail outside as twilight falls and the bugs all start chirping, fireflies skipping stones over blades of grass that poke through you in patches in the deadlands away from the light, the slight dry rotting smell of sweet wet wood and black mud beneath the home above you not nearly strong enough to dissipate that smell that makes you burn burn burn.

Your excitement swells and stiffens and your fingertips and tongue grow sticky with venom and want as heartbeats begin to fill the space above your head –

Whoever lives in the three houses have returned home, and all of the scents are stronger than ever, and she is somewhere above you, and you curse yourself with spitting red vitriol that you don't know how to track that scent when it covers everything in this godforsaken corner of the woods because

_you_

_want_

_her._

Her aroma is more than pink and red; she's yellow and blue and white and cozy and warm and wine and sex and spice and sting and exotica and comfort and unbearable sadness and unspeakable enticement and

_you_

_want_

_her._

But you know you can't find her

_right_

_now_

and it would make you cry if you could feel anything besides blinding need and you're invisible harsh hardness and you'd die if you could from the pain of it all and finally it's dark and you glide out from beneath the porch and slip up to the windows; her outrageous flavor isn't coming from these windows and you're disgusted, peeping in at the female with caramel-colored hair who smells ancient and heavy, and you feel a small tug to her but it's nothing and you push it away –

There are more urgent needs –

And there's a more promising tidbit fitfully asleep in a froth of canary yellow, but on your second deep drag of her fragrance, just as you're slipping through her windowpane because that girl's smell is covering the surface of the room, you almost vomit because somehow the thing in the bed smells like –

_you._

You're so puzzled that you accidentally overshoot as you zoom out of the fetid room and have to find your way back to the trio of houses through the cursed tangled woods, and your heart would skip a beat if you had one because suddenly you're quite able to track the scent you want and your float feels like flight as you speed towards the morsel you absolutely need; you're at her window and staring inside and there she is in the bed: boring and brunette and you're almost disappointed because you'd have expected beautiful… but you can't even be bothered to look at her because the burning in your throat must surely be visible in a ring of white fire and you can already feel the heat between her thighs and your hand is through the glass –

And something is wrong.

You recoil. Blackened. Burnt.

_She's awake._

You spit venom to the ground and watch the grass die, and languish, guided by the now-blinding need to feed on the next available body and bitter that you have to wait another night for her, to the last remaining window.

- - - - -

_Edward's mouth burbled silently, a tiny movement like a guppy, his green eyes wide and aware. Bella's eyes were still closed, her hands covered with white mittens to keep her from scratching the body that she didn't yet understand to be her own. Esme and Renee tilted their arms, letting Edward study the other baby. Renee thought she could almost see the little cogs turning in Edward's head as he placidly appraised Bella, figuring out what she was, what she was all about, thinking she was very lovely._

_She's so tiny, marveled Esme, looking at the miraculous difference between week-old Bella and month-old Edward, already unbelieving that her tiny babies could have been so small. "They grow up so fast."_

- - - - -

The second time Edward kissed me, we were both so sunburnt that we left peeling scads of translucent skin all over Esme's velvet couches for weeks afterward – but the sun came so seldomly in Forks, under the sparkling gray orographic lift of Mount Baker and the condensation trapped trees of the woods that bordered town, and she couldn't blame us too much for overdosing on light while we could.

Eighth grade was almost upon us and everyone we knew had already paired off into what would inevitably become the rest of their lives, because that was just the way Forks worked.

Jasper no longer hated Alice's underpants.

It was why Edward and I were alone out in the sun all day; Rosalie and Emmett both worked long hours at the garage and when Jasper had the house to himself, he and Alice tumbled all over each other like the kittens, clawing long scratches and mewling their sounds and Alice always told me about it later as we hid under her blankets, and her eyes would shine and I was jealous because no one wanted me that way.

I was jealous that Alice had Jasper, and I was jealous that Jessica had Mike and Lauren had Colin and Angela had Ben and Charlotte had Peter and Esme had Carlisle and —

The Swans were alone.

Renee Higginbotham-Dwyer had Phil.

Charlie Swan had no one.

And Bella Swan wanted Edward Cullen, but had him not, and I felt terrible to be so envious and wanting because it hurt to look at Edward beside me so beautiful and oblivious in his bathing suit, lying flat on the slats of the white lattice porch.

He hummed Moon River under his breath, green eyes closed, soaking in the light he had always exuded for me – my own personal sun, my air – and I rolled onto my side to stare at him while I could, before his eyes would inevitably open and I'd have to point out an interesting cloud.

He had an angelic face, still soft with retained boyhood then, but the sharp chiseled lines every woman with a pulse would grow to love were beginning to make an appearance. His skin was bright red already from the burn but he was still sweet, and his buffalo penny copper hair curled around his face just a little too long, out of teenage stubborn refusal to let Esme cut it.

I knew Edward as well as I knew myself – which is to say not much, really, as we were only thirteen – but I knew the constellation of six freckles on his sternum and I knew the funny jut of his belly-button and I bit my lip at the way the part of him I didn't know was jutting up, a new sensation, beneath the dark blue of his trunks. He didn't hide it from me. We were Bella and Edward.

Still, I blushed darker crimson as I finally asked: _Aren't you curious about the things they do?_

_Who?_

_Everyone else. Alice and Jasper. Emmett and Rosalie. Everyone. Your parents._

Edward's eyes opened and slid over to look at me, and he propped himself up on his elbow, scooting closer to me, and the end of the jut brushed accidentally against my bikini-bare belly and it was scary and exciting.

_Not really. We'll do those things when we're supposed to, like when we're married._

My stomach clenched at the idea of Edward married to some pretty girl and doing all those things and the jealousy gnawed at me until I thought my kneecaps might break.

_I don't think I'll ever get to do them, then_, I admitted sadly, biting my lip, shaking a curtain of hair between us.

Edward chuckled and scooted closer still, and he was suddenly pressed against me, electric and wooden and weird.

_Silly Bella_, he cooed then; my favorite phrase in the pit of my stomach, _We'll do_ everything _once we're married_.

And his long-fingered pianist's hands were brushing my tangled hair back from my face.

His lips were soft but chapped in the middle, and he tasted like peanut butter sandwich and grape soda we'd shared for lunch, and I had no idea how to kiss and probably moved my mouth too much, but maybe I didn't move it enough, and all of a sudden bathing suits seemed to leave bare far too much skin and I was intimidated by Edward for the first time in my life.

_Alice wants our wedding to be peach_, he said with a smirk as I stared at him, breathless. _But I told her I like you in blue_.

- - - - -

You're sucking her in with greedy gasps and hard thrusts, but it's OK because she's bigger than yesterday's curly-haired girl, and her essence is sweeter, too, more blueberry than grapefruit, but she's nothing special. She's not freesia, not her.

You looked at this one before sliding into her; she is beautiful – much more beautiful than the alluringly disappointing brunette – and blonde and older than the last night's sip, too.

She's almost as tall as you think you'd be if you could stand on the ground to judge, but her pale feet are long and narrow, with weirdly knobby toes – the second are longer than the first; her toenails were filed short and rectangular and painted pearlescent pink. She has a mole on her right ankle, just between the ball of bone and the bowstring of protuberant tendon stretched at the back.

The mole is small, unobtrusive, and bean-shaped.

Tattooed around it is a symmetrical, curved shape that a small part of your brain insists is a heart, but it's not and you know it, because her heart is lopsided and ugly and murmuring between beats with a worrying swishing sound, but that doesn't affect you.

Once you can get a taste of the brunette, you won't bother with this blonde anymore; you had to flush semen from her before you could feed and that was unpleasant, and the smell of the huge man sleeping beside her is strong and unappetizing, and this feeding altogether unsatisfactory even as you gain the sustenance you need.

The man grunts once in his sleep and rolls over, stirring up his ursine scent and you gag a little, burying your face in the cleave of her neck to mask the man's smell as you pump harder, just wanting to be finished –

And then she is, convulsing around you and coating you in the sweet slickness you gratefully suck up, and this one talks to her dream as she comes beneath you –

"Emmett…"

Your nostrils flare in disapproval as you find your own release and flee quickly, not wanting to linger in case the man wakes, and as soon as you're outside the couple's window, the smell of the brunette assaults you and you're dizzy, floating outside her window, watching her sit awake in the dark.

- - - - -

_Bella whimpered again and her arms roiled, the storm in her face a warning to her impending bawl. Edward's brow furrowed again, lips pouting out like little pink shells, and his own small arm shot out of his blankets._

_Esme, Renee, Carlisle, and Charlie all winced as his wrinkly pink hand set course to collide with Bella's cheek –_

_But the gentle pat he dropped against her face, petting her like something precious, spoke volumes to every breathing being in the room – even Mary Alice, who stopped stirring and accepted the pacifier from between Carlisle's fingers, staring in awe at her brother and the baby._

_Bella quieted, sighing in a hiccuppy little sound. Edward sang two soft notes that would never know words; baby-language._

_Bella's doe-brown eyes opened for the first time, staring straight into Edward's green gaze._


	3. id ego eximius

WOW! A huge welcome to the 40+ new alerts since last update - let me know who rec'd this story so I can thank them. I hope to hear everyone's thoughts on this chapter, it was unusually tough to write.

If you like this story, it is eligible for the **Indie Twific Awards** [**www(dot)theindietwificawards(dot)com**] and **The Bellies** [**www(dot)thecatt(dot)net(slash)tw(slash)Default(dot)aspx**] as a "Best Alternate Universe" story (not all-human, since Edward is, well, not a human anymore). I also have a one-shot that I think may be my favorite piece of all time entered in the **Age of Edward** contest; **.net/s/5110837/1/Lavender**. Thanks to everyone who may have nominated _Ars Moriendi_ for either award or who has read and reviewed _Lavender_! (Or _Tiny Bones_, or reviews this chapter of _Ars Moriendi_, to be fair.)

Love and thanks to **nicnicd** and **contreplongee**; your words of encouragement carried me through a rough week. As always, **stella luna sky**, **doitforyou**, **le moulin**, and **windtrails** own my heart.

* * *

**id ego eximius**

Shelves of knickknack porcelain statues: little white milkmaids with blue pinafores and tulip hats, Mickey and Minnie Mouse holding hands, great gray majestic ibises.

Lemon curd simmering on the stove, rich with yellow egg yolks and smelling like somewhere far-off and exotic, where maybe Nana Elizabeth danced with Grandpa Poppie when they were young and beautiful, and maybe she wore a brown grass skirt over her gingham sunsuit and he wore a tropical print shirt.

Trains pass through even more often on Fridays, flowing down the thirty-eight railroad crossings, the whistles singing to each other in a strange tribal language that I don't speak. I like the freighters with wheezing long whistles best.

"How are you holding up, Bella?"

I jumped, startled from the reverie I didn't deserve as I stirred lemon curd, too sunshine yellow, in Esme's pastel kitchen, trying to busy my hands and calm my mind and provide what little I could for the family that would never be mine, trying to prolong the day they would forget about me without Edward there to remind them.

Rosalie sidled up beside me, putting her arm around my shoulders, and I was surprised. After we had all turned thirteen and Edward almost broke Jasper's nose when it transpired he'd seen what Alice (barely) hid beneath her skirts, and Edward made it abundantly clear that his ideas about propriety and responsibility did not extend towards the lifestyle of Jasper's unmarried mother – neigh the inception of his existence at all, though after their apologies he again tolerated the blond boy – Rosalie had shied from us both, assuming as so many did that my thoughts mirrored Edward's like a smaller magnet.

I allowed myself the maternal comfort of her arm. And I was honest.

"Not well."

Rosalie sighed sadly and brushed some mousy hair back from my face. I had always liked her, despite what she thought, though she intimidated me – being a girl in Forks, I had been raised with that Rosalie Hale as my cautionary tale against beauty and brazenness and boys. But I was young, not like that biddy Mrs. Cope or, to be fair, quick-tempered Edward, and I didn't think what happened to Rosalie to be her fault.

She couldn't help being beautiful any more than I could help being plain.

"I am sorry, Bella," she said, pulling back to study my face. "Edward and I had our differences, but I know he sure as shit loved you."

* * *

_At sixteen, Edward very nearly gave Bella a heart attack._

_A mere four months before the blood clot in his brain unexpectedly burst and claimed his life, the pair received the surprise of their lives one bluegreen Saturday evening when Edward burst unexpectedly into Bella's room._

_"Bella!" he cried, all boyish excitement, as her white door flew so far inside that the knob reverberated off the wall. "Why didn't you answer your – "_

_And he stopped stock-still._

_Bella scrunched beneath her blankets, brown eyes as wide as saucers and staring at Edward, her mouth a perfectly round ring of regret._

_A brightly crimson blush crept in red vines down from Bella's widow's peak over her forehead, apple-cheeks, and chin; past her neck and down into her shoulders, which peeked out from above the lacy hem of her comforter._

_Her shoulders…_

_Edward swallowed, his jeans straining._

_"Bella…" he asked hoarsely, voice ratting bones, "Are you bare beneath your sheets?"_

_Bella's eyes filled with tears._

* * *

You're hiding in your half-blown sanctuary beneath the creaky porch of the largest house and your hands are moving fast out of necessity, sucking in her diluted essence in unsatisfying slurps as she moves and lives and _just won't fucking go to sleep_ above you, her delicious drastic scent mingling with last night's blonde blueberry tart and her heart pounding sad and slow and lush every time either female voice utters the same unimportant inconsequential sound, two mirror syllables that sully the tongue you wish to be sucking the venom from your stealthily sticky fingertips –

"Ed-werd" is a noise you meticulously try to learn, rolling the ugly sound against your lips, so you can make her heart pound more sweet constriction into her pink places because _she has to sleep sometime_.

* * *

_Edward's legs unglued and he flew to her bedside. He perched birdlike on its edge, daring to look upon her. "Bella?" he asked, his hand creeping above the comforter towards the curve of her thigh. "Are you bare?"_

_Bella buried herself further beneath the baby blue blanket, tears brimming over and nose bubbling. "Please don't break up with me!" she begged, desperate. "Please, Edward, I'm so sorry; please, please don't break up with me!"_

_Edward's brow knit in confusion as his hand settled against the warmth of Bella's leg. "Wh – " he stuttered. "Wh-why would… I – Bella, I – what?"_

_Bella's face disappeared behind her hands. Her voice came out as a whisper. "You think it's wrong."_

_Edward's eyes flashed. "How could you think I find anything about your body to be wrong?"_

_Bella pulled the comforter over her head._

_"Come out," Edward said, shaking her thigh, voice stronger than his resolve._

_The blanket shook its head._

_"Bella, come out," Edward repeated, taking his hand away._

_The comforter scrunched further in on itself._

_Edward huffed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then, with hands he hoped she would never know were shaking, he slowly pulled the comforter down._

* * *

I talked to Rosalie all afternoon as the sunshine yellow curd thickened and I pounded out cold-pastry crusts and baked unnecessary pies, thank-you gifts for the pitying acquaintances who showered the Cullens in casseroles (the image made Rosalie laugh) that none of us had any interest in eating.

Edward was gone – and all the tuna-pea crisp in the world wouldn't change that.

Rosalie sat at the table, watching me work and get covered in white flour like a little kitchen ghost, a curious look in her long-lashed eyes.

"Bella?" she asked finally, when all chit-chat had been had and six pies had been baked and I thought I'd successfully hid my tears for a third time, "Can I ask you a tough question?"

I wasn't ready for tough questions. I wasn't ready to think about the way Edward's face looked empty and waxen in his coffin the afternoon before in the fading light and I couldn't yet face the fact that he would never have hit his head had he not been sneaking back inside his own empty bedroom after a tryst in mine the night he died; I wasn't ready to wash his last orgasm from my sheets, all I had left of him.

"Yes."

Rosalie's voice was smaller than I could have imagined coming from the brash Aphrodite. "Why did Edward hate me?"

* * *

_Just to her chin._

_Then he gently slid one hand over the soft swell of her cheek, patting her as though she were something precious._

_One red-rimmed brown eye opened._

_"Please come out," Edward cooed, three words of song that would never again share their melody._

_Outside Bella's whitewashed windowframe, the poseidon sky bent in on itself and collapsed in wet rain, rumbling with the vibration of thunder as white lightning split the air into equal pushing halves of hot and cold._

_Bella whimpered once as the other eye opened. She clutched the comforter to her neck as she sat up, and Edward swallowed at the sight of her pale naked arms and shoulders and one wingéd side of her fragile clavicle. "I'm sorry, Edward," she whispered. "I know you don't think – I mean, I'll under – " she swallowed, her voice wet and heavy. "I'll understand if you're ashamed of me. I was just… so… curious, Edward, and I want you so badly, and I'm so sorry…"_

_"Bella." Edward's voice cut like a knife as his pale hands found hers at the top of the comforter. "Please don't be sorry. I'm not ashamed of you, I could never be ashamed of you." His tone lowered and smoothed like oil, greasing the words to slide together sinfully. "I wish you'd come out, Bella, and let me see you. I'm curious, too, you know."_

* * *

I paused, neither quite unable nor unwilling to answer, but knowing my own weakness: admitting Edward's imperfection.

Especially now.

I looked through the weeping pane of glass into the Cullens' lush green backyard, over the porch that was twice the sight of my first kiss; the air held a strange frozen shimmer despite the late May heat, like the clouds just decided they were sick of floating in the sky and wanted to succumb to gravity with the rest of us.

"Edward didn't hate you," I said, uncomfortable but truthful. "He loved you, Rosalie. He just…" I paused. "Edward had really strong ideas about… about the right way to do things. Y-your life didn't… didn't mesh well. With his ideas, I mean. I – "

Rosalie stood up fast from her seat and crossed the room in two long supermodel strides, suddenly hugging me close.

I still couldn't cry, even as I whispered the words I thought I would never say: "I disagreed with him."

Rosalie kissed my forehead then, and my heart panged because the last person to kiss my brow had been Edward, just before he left, his lips pressing against the tip of my hairline – just where the morticians had covered his bruise for the coffin.

* * *

_Bella's brow furrowed. "But you always say no! And you won't touch me, ever, Edward, and it makes me feel so bad… and Rosalie – "_

_"I never realized that made you feel bad, Bella," Edward apologized softly, squeezing her hands and guiding her to lower the coverlet an inch. "I can't touch you, Bella. It's not that I won't. I just can't."_

_"Why not?"_

_Lightning lit the tiny bedroom and shadows played across Edward's tortured face as he stared at their joined hands, just above Bella's small tight breasts, and he guided the comforter and her fingers an inch lower again. "If I start, I won't stop, Bella, I know I won't, I'm not strong enough to treat you the way you deserve unless it's this way... but that doesn't mean I don't want you, Bella… I do; I want you so badly it hurts me."_

* * *

I lay in my bed later that night, spent but unable to sob or to sleep, face buried deep in my messy sheets, running through the complication that had always been Edward's attitudes and being strangely certain that

_he_

_was_

_gone._

I knew of course that he was dead; I didn't suffer that delusion I'd read about of feeling that the lost beloved was only hiding or sleeping or would be returning soon –

If my Edward had seen me so desolate, he would have given up the world to be at my side, he always had. He missed school on days that I felt sick, gave up vacations to stay with me when I'd broken my ankle or my ribs, jumped in front of a van to shield me from harm, crushing his femur and giving up his own cross-country career – his ticket out of Forks – what had seemed, at the time, to be his best shot at a future.

At his funeral, I had looked into the crowd for his reassuring grin twice when my fear of crowds got the better of me and I swayed on my sleep-deprived feet –

And that grin was not there.

Because

_Edward_

_was_

_gone._

Tonight more than ever, though, I could feel his absence, the lack of his light. I knew he was imperfect in the eyes of others – today's talk with Rosalie only served to further impress his faults: stubbornness, righteousness, spontaneous bouts of vanity – but he was perfect in my eyes because he was the center of my world; he had made it so since the first moment I opened my eyes.

His voice was my buoy and his eyes my anchor; I always ran in the pull of his tides and crashed like a wave into his arms. I never bothered to think so much about what I would be as Bella Swan because that girl would end and I could become Bella Cullen: I would be Edward's wife and the mother Edward's children.

I suddenly had to find a self outside of him, and that terrified me. Rosalie had assured me that it got easier and easier as time passed and that I had my whole life ahead of me, that Edward was not all I had to be, but when I asked her if she remembered the look on his face the night of our last Homecoming, when he gave me his ring, she only looked puzzled.

Jasper gave Alice his ring that night, too; the photograph in a silver frame on my nightstand was taken by his mother. That Rosalie could have already forgotten that night when I never would; late that night after the town was asleep, we'd lain on the cold morningdew grass and I had gotten to touch Edward for the first time, his ring heavy on my hand making me weightless…

Now, he was gone and the world felt colder; I shivered and pulled the blankets tighter around myself.

* * *

When She _finally_ left the big white house and descended down the rickety porch steps, the sun was covered in year-old newspapers, smudged with grease from being used as draining papers for doughnuts. Light hung iridescent through the transparencies, hitting the spaghetti clouds' backsides, everything lit in half-tone: john paul george ringo, everything stuck in another timeless time, the smell of the rain thick and heavy like fog with the scent of glaciers melting and falling into the sea with a crash and minerals and smoke turning white moths black.

Even though She was awake and you knew it would hurt you couldn't help it, you darted out for just a moment, licking the bone of ankle, instantly drunk on her and falling back into the darkness with a gasp, barely registering her movement as she stumbled and fell down the last two steps.

She lay dazed on the sweating green grass for a moment and you rumbled with hope that she had broken –

If she were dead, you could steal her, and never have to give her back.

But she rose, tripsy but upright on her narrow white feet, and staggered off to the little blue house you knew to be her own, and you desperately wanted to follow, but the burn of the sun and the burn of her awareness had scorched you black already and you retreated beneath the mouldering wood, licking your wounds.

But now the sky is jet black and tumbling with hot and cold air; thunder and rain and you're soaked and hard and ready and outside her window, watching her, knowing her sweet brandywine taste from just the smallest taste against unknowing pornographic skin, waiting for her to sleep so you can _take her_.

* * *

_"But you don't have to stop!" Bella cried, scooting forward to stare into Edward's eyes. "Edward, it would be okay! We love each other. It would be wonderful to be able to – express it, in those ways." She scooted closer still, and the comforter fell forgotten to her waist. Edward's eyes locked on hers; Bella had not yet noticed anything amiss. "Please, Edward," Bella begged. "Please show me how you love me."_

_A v-shape creased between Edward's eyebrows. "Bella…" his eyes fluttered shut and Bella watched his Adam's apple bob. "I am trying to show you how much I love you in the best way I can imagine. I'm not going to let you end up like Rosalie."_

_Bella's eyes flashed. "Us making love would not be anything like what happened to her."_

_The cupid mouth pursed. "So you say. Whatever really happened that night, she was dating Royce King, and she ended up alone and pregnant and has to be a mechanic in Forks, Washington, for the rest of her life. I'm not going to risk that happening to you."_

_Bella stroked Edward's smooth cheek gently with the backs of two fingers. "I wouldn't be alone, even if all the rest happened. We would just be starting our family early. Besides, it worked out for the best; she loves Jasper, and she has Emmett now." She smiled decadently. "Though I could never replace you."_

_Edward smiled sadly. "You can't know that it'd be okay, Bella. Anything could happen."_

_Bella's hand curled into a fist. "Don't even say that, Edward." Her swollen eyes filled with panicked tears. "How could you even joke about leaving me? You can't leave me. Not ever."_

_Edward gathered Bella close and she pressed her face into the crook of his neck, inhaling his sweet grass stain smell and breathing in rhythm to his slow-thudding heartbeat, pushing gently in soft tides against her skin._

_Edward swallowed and rubbed his hand slowly down the bare expanse of Bella's white back, fingertips tracing the angelwings of her scapulae, counting her vertebrae in fearful reverence. Bella had forgotten her nudity, but Edward thought he never would._

_"Bella." His voice came out as an embarrassingly boyish croak; he cleared his throat once and tried again. "Bella… m-m-may I look at you?"_

* * *

Your face is pressed against the glass as rain pelts your back in long wet lashes that sting with wind and charcoal tanned leather.

She's moving silently around her room, touching the frames of small square photographs, face impassive, top half bare and bottom half hidden by a gray garment that makes you growl with dislike. You want to see it. You want to see it and you're not sure why, because she's not pretty, but she belongs to you and she's acting like she doesn't know it.

Your hand acts of its own accord and it's through the glass, still as stone and waiting, burnishing black and you're roiling in pain and you want to withdraw your hand but you just can't, her scent so close against the suction of your fingertips is delicious and tipsy and the longer you wait and endure the burn the more bearable it becomes.

You squirm in excitement at the idea of acclimation, of taking her awake and aware. She's a garish thing but your mouth is watering anyway and that's not something you could dare to pass up.

She crosses her room to the closet and runs a hand over the line of soft pale drab fabrics; you're jealous of their strands and imagine her hands stroking you, down your torso and across a hip to the part of you that hungers most, her fingers swirling over the end and dancing across the length, up and down and up.

Her arms stretch above her head and it's obvious naked that despite her small size she has a little bitty potbelly, a small bulge of white tummy just above the wild triangle of hair; she has the navel of a woman with a toned stomach, but below the threefold button her stomach swells, a smooth puffiness that would not be noticed when not casting an ooid shadow on the rusted bryophytes that grew shyly beneath, the helixes tangled, pressing against her skin, hiding revealing white wrinkles, silhouetted ridges, the flush pink bulb and crest.

_you_

_want_

_her._

You want this one without her clothes, her alabaster upturned breasts small and set high, unsullied iridescent opals in the strange filtered light of the corn tassel moon.

You want her spread open like an orchid, and curled tight around your wispy body with legs twined around your waist and arms pushing you closer deeper

_hunger_.

You want her rolled over so you don't have to look at her face and your hands can find her little pink nipples and suck their sustenance; you want to snatch her from her bed and sling her around your neck and run with her across the treetops of the hum and take her hard against the trees in the clearing where you can keep her away from the world for hours and hours and days…

You want her in your mouth and under your hips and running her hands over your every inch and

_you_

_want_

_her._

You swallow in half-deluded need and your other hand slips through the windowpane.

* * *

_Bella turned magenta from her tresses to her toes, the evening flashing before her eyes like the storm outside._

_"Please, Bella?" Edward whispered, keeping his eyes carefully trained on her flushed face. "You can see me, too. I just need – please, Bella. Please."_

_Bella swallowed. Edward's eyes were wild and timid and so green they burned._

_"I can see you, too?"_

_Edward nodded fast. "Yes," he breathed, voice shaky – uncharacteristic of the confident and charming young man, now confronted full in the face with his girlfriend's womanhood – and hands on Bella's palms again. "What do you want, Bella? What do you need?"_

_Bella's pink tongue poked out from between her lips to wet them nervously before her small white teeth found purchase on her upper lip, awkward and scraping. Slowly, she moved back against the pillows and languished like Cleopatra, an Egyptian queen, flaws forgotten under Edward's gaze and nonexistent in his eyes._

_She pushed the comforter down to free her skinny white legs._

_"You."_

_Edward's breath caught in his chest, heart hammering hard and fast. Bella was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen – where she looked in the mirror and saw awkward pudge, Edward saw the soft curve of the stomach that would one day swell with his baby, and it was amazing; where Bella saw two-cup-sizes-too-small, Edward saw the perfect size to fit beneath his palms and dark cherry nipples that almost made him cry; where Bella was terribly embarrassed by the tangled mess of dark curls at the apex of her thighs, Edward thought the dark froth made her real and womanly and mysterious, like a wood nymph, magical and seductive._

_Because he loved her, Edward thought Bella was beautiful._

_"Show me," Edward whispered. "Bella, show me what you were doing under your blankets."_

_The blush returned. "Why?"_

_For the first time in Bella's memory, Edward's cheeks flushed with embarrassed color and he looked away. "I imagine it all the time," he whispered. "I'm sorry, Bella, I just can't help it, you're so – and I want you so – "_

_"You do?" Bella asked, all gentle innocence, even as her wanton hands slid purposefully over the cage of her ribs._

_Edward nodded, transfixed. He ran a hand through his auburnbronze hair making it stand erect like a mane._

_Edward held his breath as Bella gentle teased small circles on her pointed nipples with four fingertips. "What do you imagine me doing, Edward?"_

_Her voice was a low purr, she now the lioness and Edward the lamb quaking in her wake._

_"I thi – I think – " he stuttered, and Bella ran one dainty foot along his shin._

_"Take off your clothes while you tell me, Edward," she sighed. One hand had fled her breasts and rested lightly over her navel, and Edward craved more._

* * *

You're crippled with pain and your limbs only bent boughs in your broken glass figurine self, crushed in the corner of Her bedroom, drowning in the sea of her exotic pepperberry freesia sweet sex perfume and it's worth the pain as your invisible organs wrench and turn outside-in inside-out and you're retching in pain at the same moment that her fragrance makes you cum and it's the most awkward sensation you've ever known.

She's lying in her bed, tauntingly still, but awake, her cherry nipples hidden beneath a dark blue tee-shirt, but you can see their outlines clearly and they're calling to you and you want so badly to go to her but it _hurts_ and you _can't_ and your shuddering pain sends out wave after wave of cold air rippling through the room; she shivers softly and pulls the blankets more tightly around herself, movement stirring up more of her breathtaking scent and you double over again, watching her intently from the corner of her bedroom…

* * *

_A tortoiseshell button fell free from Edward's shirt in his haste to obey._

_Bella owned his soul._

_He was finally as naked as she by the time her thin fingers combed through the wirebrush seaweed curls and his pink head wept three opal tears in joy._

_Feminine fingertips found fresh female flesh and Bella mewled softly, a tiny private noise: "Now, tell me, Edward, please, please tell me what you imagine."_

_Edward had been a beautiful teenage boy, all unblemished milk skin and peekaboo manly muscles and not quite yet grown into his long bones; his hands were pianists' hands and his legs runners' legs and his cock a Casanova implement and all three played together, quadriceps twitching on either side of the hand running strokes over sensitive skin._

_"I imagine you sprawled across my sheets while I lick every inch of you," Edward whispered, embarrassed, and Bella moaned, one finger sliding softly inside and Edward was so mesmerized he forgot how to live for a moment as he stared at the point of disappearance._

_"What else?"_

_"I want to be inside you, Bella, fuck, I want to be inside you," Edward panted, hand moving fast and too idiosyncratically to be effective for anyone else, scrambling to regain the momentum he'd lost in watching Bella's shining finger, "God, you're beautiful; you're all I think about, Bella, but I love you and I can't – you're too good for me, you're too good for me to think about how I do…"_

_He was rambling and wild, hands jerking and pulling and slapping hard, eyes vacant and brimming and wet and green and his cheeks flushed pink and he was gone, lost in his id and the pleasure he always denied and his sight was too short to reach past his own shimmering space –_

_"Edward, look at me," Bella whimpered, hooking her finger inside her._

_He looked at her, chest rising and falling and fingers lost beneath the veil of crinkled curls and lids heavy over her innocent brown eyes, and he spilled white over his hand and ricochet on his chest and her leg and baby blue sheets._

_Bella smiled sweetly and sighed short through her nose. Edward collapsed with his head tickling her knee, face close to watch her finish, seeping sweet scent onto her fingers._

_She held them out for him and he got shy, blushing and shaking his head; Bella gently traced his bottom lip with her wet._

_"I love you," she said softly. "There is nothing you could think that would make you bad for me."_

_Edward just turned his face into her knee and nuzzled, hiding his embarrassed tears. His tongue tremulously tasted her gift on his lip, and he struggled to keep from growing hard again, from burying his face between Bella's legs – so close, so close – to keep his thoughts of his angel as pure as he felt she deserved._

_"I love you, too."_

* * *

I rolled over, turning the pillow and holding it against me, cuddling it close.

I hadn't slept in days.

I had never felt so alone.

I glanced to the window as lightning struck, blinding me with gold, and then, in the rollicking aftershock of thunder, noticing the bright fuchsia sky of sunrise, the red round soleil burned bright into my retinas and making my eyes shut…

In the light of day, I drifted off to unwelcome sleep.


	4. animam meam convertit

I'm sorry this chapter took longer than usual -- I had a little health scare and some other personal drama you don't care about. I should have the next chapter up within a week, as usual.

**Namariel **is a goddess for rec'ing this story in hers (_Sin City_) and **contreplongee **is a goddess just because. **windtrails **is beautiful and **doitforyou **makes me laugh; I wouldn't write if not for **Le Moulin **and **Just Recycling**. As always, **stella luna sky **owns me.

**This chapter contains moderately graphic scenes of nonviolent penetrative sexuality with dubious consent. **As both a survivor of rape and a writer of a story with sensitive themes, I urge everyone to comply with requests for warnings and maintain that the safety of your readers is worth far more than a complaint of a "spoiler." I could never claim to know what is a trigger for anyone else; I only know my own -- and I like to be given that warning and that choice back. http(colon-slash-slash)www(dot)petitiononline(dot)com(slash)rapeless(slash)petition(dot)html

* * *

You're back under the porch and it smells like rotting wood and the sharp tang of grass and the overpowering absence of sun and your insides are all cattywampus and you're rocking on your heels and your head's in your hands and if you could cry, tears would course streaming down your face but you can't cry, and anyway, the tears are for your own sorry self.

_baby blue sheets_

* * *

_"Congratulations, Edward!"_

_Bella bristled as the blonde ran her hand down Edward's bicep, lingering just a little too long and smiling at him with straight white teeth._

_Edward, ever-chivalrous, smiled dutifully back and nodded. "Thanks, Lauren."_

_Bella scowled as the manicured hand didn't leave Edward's arm, but instead gave it a briskly flirtatious squeeze._

_Lauren's pinhead-thin eyebrows rose and were smothered behind white-blonde bangs. She looked through Bella like she was transparent, staring seduction into Edward's eyes. "Are you coming to the team party at the DiNalis' house?" She asked, and bit her lower lip in a way that Bella found distastefully pornographic for a fellow fourteen-year-old._

_Edward tightened his arm around Bella's waist and shook his head. "I don't think so. I was planning to take Bella out for dinner with my parents."_

_Lauren's hand dropped from Edward's arm as though scorched and she rolled her eyes far enough that Bella hoped she'd be stuck for eternity with them backwards looking at the empty space where her brain ought to be._

_"Suit yourself," the blonde sighed, a soporific sneer in her saccharine falseness._

_She turned back to the bulk of sandy blond-haired muscle and sweat wrapped around her waist. "Good job, baby," she cooed at Colin, and they set off across the ice-covered parking lot of Forks High School._

_Bella turned her face into Edward's flushed neck, taking in the tang of his drying perspiration, cold against his overwarmed skin, feeling insignificant in light of Lauren's insouciance. She was older than Lauren but smaller, more loved but less lovable, all angles and bones where Lauren had curves and softness. Bella at fourteen was gangly legs with kneecaps too big, and moonpie eyes with frightened lashes, always half-hiding behind her scraggled brown hair._

_But she'd had Edward for a year and eight months, and slowly, with butterfly kisses to the bridge of her nose and soft wet sucking kisses against her lips that made her toes curl, he made her feel almost important._

_Lips pressed like a shadow against the crown of her head, and Bella snuggled closer._

_"Congratulations, Edward," she said softly, hugging him tight. "I'm really proud of you."_

_She looked up to find Edward looking right back, pleased grin on his boyish face. He had finally let Esme cut his hair, and Bella thought he looked more handsome than ever. "Thank you, Bella." He cupped her cheek with one warm hand. "Did you want to come to dinner with us tonight? You don't have to if you don't want… I know Jasper and Alice were going to go to the twins' party; if you want to go, I'm sure they'd take you and I can come after, I just had promised Mom a dinner if I won…"_

_Bella shook her head and rested her ear against his bony shoulder. "I want to come to dinner with you. I'm afraid of the twins, and Lauren's always mean to me."_

_Edward exhaled, a white cloud of warm in the cold air. "She's only mean to you because you let her be. You're superior to her in every way, Bella."_

_He wanted to say 'my Bella,' but she was just so shy, he was never sure how she would respond. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, that he'd loved her since she was born, practically, but Jasper said that it probably wasn't a good idea._

_Alice was clear that Bella didn't even always believe yet that Edward could like her as a girl, much less love her._

_But he did._

* * *

The sun shone bright, drenched and warm after a night of rain, colors splashing across Esme's manicured lawn in Water Lilies and Haystacks, jade and hyacinth and amber, bluebrushed from the unusually clear sky.

"Bella," sighed Rosalie, opening their door, house-sitting for a full house but empty home yet again. "We didn't think you were coming today. It's later than your usual. Sun's been up for hours," she joked. Rosalie eyed the casserole dish in my hand. "Lunch?"

I nodded and stepped over the worn threshold. "It's the least I could do, since I never made it over with breakfast," I mumbled, balancing the hot pan in one hand while using the other to remove my shoes. It was warm outside for May, and I didn't wear socks; somehow, without Edward, it felt wrong to be barefoot in the Cullens' house, but there was nothing I could do.

Rosalie stepped forward and took the dish from my hands, but her eyes never left my face. "You look like you slept," she said cautiously.

No one knew how to treat me now. I slept, but in daylight, like a vampire; Edward was gone and I was undead.

I nodded again, hair falling in my face. Edward hated that. I compulsively pushed it back behind my ears, missing his hands on my skin. "A little," I acquiesced, "Early this morning. It's why I missed breakfast time. Did the family – the Cullens; did the _Cullens_ – eat?"

Rosalie's eyes softened, her smile sad; she looked like a girl in Degas painting, blurred around the edges with some unknown sorrow outside herself, projecting inwards. "They're your family, Bella. Even without him."

I swallowed around the lump that had been in my throat for days. "Did they eat?"

Rosalie laughed. "I fed them, Bella. Don't worry, after sixteen years of living with Emmett McCarty, I know how to make breakfast. Man wakes up in the morning fixin' to eat a damn bear."

I stared at Rosalie, with her perfectly flowing blonde hair and kohl-lined blue eyes, grease slicks inked deep into the maternally premature wrinkles in her cheeks, tender smile on her lips…

She got to wake up every morning with Emmett and fix him breakfast. She woke up and drank coffee with him, he had helped her to raise Jasper when no one else would, even though he was another man's child and Emmett was only seventeen when he moved to Forks from Anchorage – where he probably had actually eaten bear for breakfast – and started dating Rosalie…

I started to laugh at the image of Rosalie wrangling a bear into a frying pan on the small Harvest Gold stove in her house next door; I imagined Jasper and Emmett charging down the stairs in dungarees and ten-gallon hats for no real reason, grabbing up their silverwear to dig in –

And then Edward was in my head, jogging down a mirage of a blue staircase with a little brunette baby on his hip, two pairs of bright summergreen eyes gazing happily at me as I set out filled plates on a round little table, morning sunlight streaming in through a window beside the stove; and Edward was in my head drinking coffee beside me, naked in a rumpled bed, toes tangled together and hair a rumpus mess; Edward was in my head, idyllic.

And I would never fix Edward breakfast in the morning.

I would never know if he woke up hungry enough to eat wild game.

And there, finally, bent double in hysterical laughter –

With a casserole dish of cheese manicotti in my hands, in the Cullens' foyer, at nearly noon, three days after he had died –

I broke down and cried for Edward.

* * *

You're angry at Her.

You're angry that She didn't sleep until the sun tainted her walls with pink, with life and light and just as you were finally gliding across her floor towards Her, towards salvation, towards her flavor and her warmth, a shaft of light sliced at you through her window like a spear and you had to hold in your scream and for one moment you'd held in your hands the prospect of taking Her, but instead She bested you, the ugly pink twit, she bested you and you're hungry and needy and upset in ways you can't explain, hiding beneath that mouldering porch, smelling her above you.

Her scent has something different to it today, another chiffon shrouded layer, and you bristle; salt and seawater and rotten rose petals –

You don't like whatever it is that's changed her smell. She's _yours_ to change.

She's with a familiar blueberry smell again that you vaguely remember taking but she fades pales diminishes with each murmuring heartbeat in the wake of That girl, Her breathing uneven as the saline smell seeps from Her, coating Her indecently delicious spicy mouthwatering scent in cigarette-inducing macabre; She's vocalizing over and over the noise you practiced for Her all yesterday (_ed-werd ed-werd ed-werd_) and suddenly your stomach clenches in fear –

That noise: She likes that noise; you don't like the smell on Her now –

Is She with a male?

Your sorrow and fear wrench together and you're furious and glowing and bristling and a coldfire ball of rage and an emotion that you don't know a name for but feels like churning bile in your empty dead stomach, strong enough to overpower your insatiable hunger for Her; you're twisting and roiling in the shade of the porch as you wait for the sun to set because She slept once, She fooled you, but you're getting used to Her presence and the harsh burn of Her wakefulness and She will not get away from you again.

_you_

_want_

_her_

and she is _yours_.

* * *

_"Hey, you two!" Alice's small sweet voice called as Jasper's diecast Dodge Charger pulled up alongside Edward and Bella in a sweeping arc. She proudly wore Jasper's bronze medal around her neck, face painted in Forks High navy and gold, black hair spiked in a devil's crown around her head as she leaned half-out the window, held inside the car mostly by Jasper's steady hand on her waist. "Why aren't you coming to the party?"_

_"We're going to dinner with Mom and Dad," Edward said complacently. "Are you going to wash your face before you go to the DiNalis'?"_

_Jasper's boat of a car idled in neutral in front of the pair, Alice hanging out the passenger window, arguing with Edward, and Jasper, triumphant glow still plastered on his cross-country team face, leaned out his own window, yelling from car to car with Tyler Crowley, a junior on their team._

_Edward was the only freshman to make the Varsity squad, and the gold medal around his neck proved that it was neither favoritism nor in vain._

_The sky overhead was crystalline gray, a frozen mesh of ice cubes that settled on Bella's skin with a brisk, rejuvenating chill; the skinny black fingers of the naked trees poked holes in the white clouds and made black crows fall out, swooping and cawing._

_"God, Edward, you are so stubborn!" whined Alice, furrowing her brow. "You are so going to wish that you just got in this damned car and came to the party, you mark my words." She frowned and turned to tug at Jasper's sleeve. "They're not coming," she reported with a long-suffering sigh. "We can go."_

_Jasper leaned across her lap to twang out the open window: "You sure?"_

_Edward nodded and Bella echoed, her face still half-buried in Edward's chest, shy around even her closest childhood friends today in the face of the whole town's adoration for her Edward._

_"Suit yourselves and see you tomorrow," Jasper said breezily, and inched his heavy car forward across the crunching field of ice on the asphalt._

_Tyler turned the steering wheel of his van to edge into the exit lane behind his friend, but the turn was too tight and the ice too slick and he hadn't had his license quite long enough not to panic and his hands flew away from the wheel in vain to block his face with his forearms as his back tires squealed a whine._

* * *

"Bella," Esme urged me gently, her warm powdersoft hands supporting my back where I had collapsed on her entry hall linoleum. "Bella, sweetest heart, it's okay… dear heart, it's okay…"

I clung to her forearms, dwarfed by her grace and ashamed of my melodramatic misery in front of her; he was her _son_, her oldest child – if only by eleven minutes – and her sorest joy… I was just the girl next door, just the childhood love of Edward… that was all he would ever be able to be for me, now.

Despite his promises. Damn his confidence.

He would never be anything other than my high school sweetheart. My first love. Sad eyes would follow me wherever I went in Forks for the rest of my life, the way accusing glances clung to Rosalie like a second skin and hushed whispers trailed Alice for taking up with the Hale boy, the way widows sent my father spiced peaches and pickled watermelon at canning season for the last fifteen years and how no one would ever say my mother's name.

I was just another small-town porch story.

Esme was his _mother_.

"Esme – " I gasped, trying so hard to stop the sudden onslaught of tears, "Please, don't worry about me, I should be – I should be taking care of you."

Esme smiled sadly and the perennial row of pearls around her stately neck caught the sweet sunlight, glowing warm against her skin. "Bella, you have been a daughter to Carlisle and me and a sister to Alice for as long as you've been alive. That hasn't changed."

Her soft hand found my chin and gently urged my face up to look at her. I was humbled by the quiet tear-stained strength in her hazelgold eyes and Edward's nose, but with a light spray of freckles like Alice.

I bit my lip as my breath caught in my chest, daring for the first time to take a leap without Edward's open arms to catch me, and I believed her, even though being proven wrong would hurt like Edward died a second time.

I hugged Esme, wishing for the ten-millionth time that she could be my mother, and together we rose from the floor, the two women who loved Edward best.

She took the tray of pasta I had brought them from the balustrade she'd precariously balanced it on and carried it one-handed with ease to the kitchen, her other arm around my shoulders still, not trusting that I was strong enough to stand on my own, to hold myself up; disbelieving that I could exist in space without a Cullen at my side to get me through.

Alice and Jasper and Rosalie joined us for lunch around the glowing yew kitchen table; Emmett had to work to support Rosalie and Jasper and Carlisle had to work to sustain himself for Esme and Alice.

I spent the afternoon holed up in Alice's bedroom, curled up atop her bed with her looking at old photo albums and scrapbooks full of silver glitter, photos of Alice and me and Jasper and Edward. Her hands looked dainty as she turned the pages, smooth black nail polish and Jasper's gold ring with a pear-shaped topaz stone looking light and homey on her left pinkie.

I looked down at my own pale hand beside hers, fingers absently tracing Edward's features in a photo from that homecoming dance, watching the steely glint of silver from the thin braided band and the dancing light echoing from the small round diamond. I wore my ring on my wedding finger. Edward insisted.

"D'you think I should take off my ring?"

* * *

The light is fading and you're squirming in excitement, drawing dirty pictures in the ground with an outstretched finger and drowning in deluges of delicious debauchery starring Her scent, imagining the sweet taste of her honey on your tongue and her warmth as she writhes beneath you –

_warmth_

is a foreign sensation for you, with the sun scorchsplintering burning painful and the ground damp and cool and you have no blood no veins no strength and you're weak in your coldness but there's something else there that you can't shake:

The darkness is cold, and you're consumed in it, lost somewhere in the shadows where the light never touches, and it chills you to the bone though it's the only home you've ever known. You are a child of darkness, a creature of the night, shrouded in mystery and cloaked in some terrible ambiguous loss, unresolved grief, business unfinished that binds you in no uncertain terms to the dark edges of velvet dimmed anathema.

_she_

_is light._

_She is nothing_, you curse; she's a shy pale face and small breasts and dark nipples and a stomach with a little paunch you don't understand because her thighs are so thin. She's nothing; a perfume without a bottle, an aroma lingering long after the fresh-baked bread has cooled and left the kitchen, a floral fragrance in winter's dead bouquet.

She's nothing. But she is light. You don't know why you've drawn her smiling in your grand delusion in the dirt, one hand sketching out her curves and the other on yourself, again, craving and shameful, but as the crickets begin to chirp and call out for mates with rubbing legs and wanton song beneath the comfortcover of night, you know that she is sunlight that won't blister and cipher to your cryptich and warmth to cover you and

_you_

_want_

_her._

* * *

_The huge blue sport utility vehicle rocked and swerved and its tail-end came sliding like a hydroplane around the boot of Jasper's stalled and panicked Charger, aimed straight at Edward in his gold medal and Bella in her great gray jacket, cowering against his side –_

_"Bella!"_

_With a quicktwisting thrust that left her ribs bruised, Bella found herself falling ankle-over-foot to the icy asphalt, pant leg catching on the Charger's exhaust pipe and burning her skin, scarring a line of angry red against her white ankle, her head hitting down on pavement and making her see stars._

_There was a sickening crunch in the next nanosecond and Bella tried hard to sit up, but there was no room –_

_Edward was trapped between the front bumper of Tyler's mammoth van and the crushed-in trunk of the Charger, pinned at the legs just above his knees, face grit down and drained as he tried to stay calm._

_Alice was screaming as she tumbled out of Jasper's passenger seat and fell beside Bella to help her sit up, the back of her brunette head bleeding; Jasper fought hard against the white balloon that puffed from his steering wheel and scarred his pretty face, trying to uncatch his seatbelt to reach a phone or an adult; Tyler lay slumped back against his seat, blood dripping from a temple._

_Alice wiped Bella's head clean with her lime green scarf._

_Jasper sobbed apologies in Rosalie's arms while Emmett assessed the damage to both cars, speaking soothing words to Edward, who hung suspended in steel, stock-still in shock, eyes unwavering from where his twin cradled his girlfriend on the ground._

_Charlie arrived with lights flashing and sirens blazing, escorting the ambulance; once Edward was extricated, they tried hard to force an oxygen mask onto his face as he lay broken, but he kept batting their helpful hands away._

_"Bella," he insisted, over and over: "Bella! She hit her head when she fell, you need to take care of Bella! I'm sorry; I didn't mean to hurt her! Bella!"_

* * *

I dressed for bed slowly, turning the ring on my finger around and around.

_Do_ you _think you should take it off?_

_No._

_Then don't._

The world was so simple for Alice, the answers just clear when it came to her brother, to Jasper, to love. Alice had always believed in everything; faith overwhelmed her frame even now, even when Edward had been taken from her, even though she had been the one to find his lifeless body and cradled his cold head in her lap and called for Esme and wouldn't let him go for the paramedics.

She'd held me this afternoon just as I'd held her at his funeral, one flying hand smoothing over my arm to soothe me, encouragement to believe in her prophesy that I would be alright.

I settled into bed, curling my knees to my chest and gently rubbing the long scar on my ankle, remembering how Edward put himself in harm's way to try to protect me, allowed himself to be hospitalized, future taken from him and life threatened, out of some overwrought sense of obligation to my safety, my well-being.

Well, my welfare suffered now, but he had freed from any obligation towards me. I wouldn't put that burden on his family in his stead.

With determination burning bright in the pit of my stomach and the soles of my feet, I settled back against the pillows and closed my eyes against the darkness, determined to sleep and find the sunlight when I rose.

I would be alright.

* * *

You are so excited and so needful and so single-minded in your intensity that your lusty haze becomes fear as you slip through Her window, the soft mournful sob of her sleep calling to you, beckoning you forward, allying you with her baby blue sheets.

A patch of thin blanket near Her face is splotched with the remnants of fluid from a male, his scent faded and familiar like denim, and Her hand clutches him close, and the reeling anger comes back biting at your legs and gnawing at your knees and you want to tear him away from Her, out of Her; She is _yours, not his, yours_, and She's here and asleep and soft and open barely hidden beneath the sheets and you're harder than you've ever been, all glassy hard bulge and sweetsticky venom dripping like sweat and saliva and semen building to be taken by Her in exchange for a gift.

_But she's so small_ curled up in that bed.

_And her face is so innocent_ as it smoothes out in sleep, your presence near her window beginning to shade her dreams…

_And her scent is so sweet_ as She rolls to her back, writhing arms-up and legs-out with tiny nipples poking through the thin fabric of Her dark blue shirt, mumbling softly to the rhythm of the erotica you've projected into Her mind – _ed-werd ed-werd_; palethin thighs falling open and hips moving tiny circuits like a wave, the tattered white fabric wrapping her intimate places slick with the sustenance you need and your decision is made for you.

_you_

_want_

_her_

and you creep closer, reach out to touch Her skin – finally, finally! – and you're shaking with need and anticipation and your fingers are ghosting over the white panties and unlike with the cinnamoncurl sip and the blueberry tart, you want them gone, you don't want to sink through their flimsy obstruction, you want to see Her ethereal pinkness, you want Her outrageous flavor for yours and yours alone, and with light hands, you shred the fabric from her body before Her heart takes another beat.

She has soft brown curls there, dew from Her dirty dreams glistening in tiny tangled drops.

The others had no hair there.

_She is special._

_ed-werd_ her pink lips pout; you watch them in fascination. Her back stretches and Her bottom grinds against the mattress and you're so close and She's open and wanting and She _likes_ that word, it's a bittersweet happy noise, you can see it and smell it and taste it on the air surrounding her and she's finally right there, waiting to be yours –

And you're scared.

Your body is crying with need and your mouth is full of the venom wrapping your tongue and begging to be dragged across Her skin and your fingers are clenched tight in sucking fists and the private drinking part of you is twitching against Her leg, supping her warm skin and not getting nearly enough and She's inches away and ripe berry pink and it would be so easy, finally, wonderfully, mercifully easy…

But you're _scared_.

Tentatively, testing, crying with need and hunger and insatiable desire, you outstretch two fingers and glide gently up and down the soft pink secret. She is delicious. Colors explode behind your eyes and bloom like gigantic tropical flowers unfurling red white and yellow petals that wrap and warm and warn your fingers and hand and wrist and arm and slide tendrils of tentacles into your chest and grip tight, and you keep stroking Her, sucking in sweetness, taking Her into your skin and feeling stronger every moment.

She's murmuring quietly, dancing against you, her tiny fingers curling and crawling and she touches a puckered nipple fleetingly through the fabric of her shirt and you inhale a gasp of her pepperspicy vanillasweet scent and release against her sheets and feel vindicated: the male is no longer the only one to have claimed her; your essence is fresh in her bed and

_she_

_is_

_yours._

Suddenly your skeleton inflames and you cry out long and loud in pain now instead of pleasure; chilled as you look up from the place where your fingertips are sinking over and over into delicious warmth and She has big brown eyes staring at you like you're the lighthouse in Her storm, jaw dropped lightly and you can see her pinksoft mouth and the dark wetness of her throat and the pain of her awareness is worth it when She's looking at you that way because you know She's under your spell and will let you have anything you want.

_Ed-werd?_ Her lips move, the sound coming out as a longing whisper of butterfly wing breath, and Her hands reach for you so you wish you could ask Her to keep still; every time She moves hurts you more, but you like the way it looks when She rolls her hips into your hand, giving you more nectar through the softly sucking pores of your plasticine fingertips.

She's looking at you expectantly, murmuring _ed-werd, ed-werd, ohmyegod ed-werd_, and you don't know what to say as the pads of your glass fingertips find the softest place inside her, so you repeat her sound with a lascivious hiss:

_Ed-werd_, you nod, and she sobs, tightening around your fingers, and you like it, so you smile and repeat again, louder –

_Ed-werd._

You slurp at the soft spot inside Her, gently then harder, and She moans low in your throat and you release, taking more of Her in, taking Her essence heavy with red berries in through your every inch, and it's so lovely you hardly feel the constant burning ache of Her wakefulness now as She reaches for your face and you're frightened, pulling back so She can't reach you.

_Oh,_ She ripples softly from the top of Her lungs, _oh Iwishyoowerreel_… Her voice slurs, and you don't make any noise back, because you don't know Her words and She didn't go "ed-werd," so you just slide your fingers more luxuriously in the wet warmth and She tightens and spills and you suck it up selfishly, but as soon as you stop touching Her the burning pain is back and Her big brown eyes are milky wide and She's pleading at you with language you don't speak and Her lips are so pretty and pouty and you can't help it –

Just before you slip out her window, you bend down to put your mouth to Hers and suck out just a little more of her soul.

* * *

What scenes or moments would you like to see from Edward and Bella's past? They can be stories mentioned in _Ars Moriendi_, events from _Twilight _(the first book only, please), or any moment you're curious about (first day of high school, the day Renee left, etc.) -- what do you want to see?


	5. puteulanus luna volvit aurum

I've been abysmal at responding to reviews this week, but it came down to writing the chapter or responding to reviews and I thought more of you would want a new chapter... if I guessed wrong, please let me know. As soon as I post this, I plan to go on a response binge. **punkynomie**, **Crispy Anakin**, **contreplongee**, and **Rochelle Allison** leave me reviews that make me smile all day; **ohyoudo**, **juliejuliejulie**, and **Modified Tam** sent incredibly sweet PMs that I promise to answer ASAP.

In incredibly exciting news that makes me pee a little, _Ars Moriendi_ has been nominated for three **Indie Twific Awards**: **Best Alternate Universe WIP**, **Best Undiscovered Erotica WIP**, and **Most Original Storyline WIP**. In shocking news, my oneshot _Tiny Bones_ (see my profile) was nominated for **Best AU/AH Complete**, and while there's no way it will win, seeing its name on the list filled me with glee. **Voting begins tomorrow (9/07/2009) at http(colon)(slash)(slash)www(dot)theindietwificawards(dot)com**, and I would be so honored to get votes from any of you reading this now. Your enthusiastic responses and approval are what keep me writing.

As always, much love to the usual suspects, as well as **Love Pollution**, whose exclusion from my previous shout-outs pains me to the core.

A few of you pointed out that I forget disclaimers in my A/N sometimes; to you I say, clearly _I do not own any publicly recognizable entities_. Three of you wondered if we would learn why the sun hurts Edward in his incubus form, and to you I recommend a reread of _chapter four_; many of you worry about Incubusward's aversion to Bella's appearance, and why he would find her ugly, and your direct answer is in _chapter three_. I will never answer a question before the characters learn its answer, and it will never come in an explicit statement of fact... life and death and muddled roiling subjects with no clear-cut truths, and so it is for our Bella and Edward. But all of your questions are answered, or will be by the end... just read with your internal eye open.

* * *

Bell-La.

She is called Bell-La, and that's all you know; She is called Bell-La and her heart is bleeding. You take shelter beneath the weathered white wood come morning, after you've taken not nearly your fill from Her soft pink skin through your fingertips, and listen to Her heart beating next door:

Bell-La. Bell-La.

_bella._

- - - - -

_"So, um, Bella, are you – are you going to the – you know, the sock hop?"_

_Bella's head jerked upright and her cheeks flushed dark crimson at the surprising sight of Mike Newton standing in front of her cubby. Four spaces down, half-hidden by Mike's pudgy shoulder, she saw Edward's green eyes glaring and she shrunk back._

_"I wasn't going to go," she mumbled, shaking out her hair to hide from Edward's inexplicable anger and Mike's overeager buckteeth._

_Mike looked put out but determined and leaned in conspiratorially; behind him, Edward took a menacing step towards the pair – as menacing as a twelve-year-old could be wearing Garanimals and parted hair plastered down by a zealot twin sister._

_"But Bella," Mike whispered, whining, twelve freckles and six pimples dotting across his nose, "If you don't go, then how can I save you a dance?"_

_Bella wanted to die._

_"Um," she stuttered as she chewed desperately on a lock of hair, "I, actually, I think Jessica wanted to dance with you?"_

_She couldn't even look up, couldn't check to see the expression on Mike's face, or Edward's behind him, and closed her eyes further against the sensation of having someone – two someones – staring at her. She wanted to crawl into her cubby and hide away amongst her fleece-lined parka and mouldering paperbacks and the lone pack of crayons that Mrs. Cross made everyone in the class buy though they never seemed to be used._

_"I know that," Mike chuffed, all bravado and puffed up peacock show. "But I don't wanna dance with Jess; I can dance with her any time I want. I wanna dance with you."_

_Bella crouched in on herself, hiding further, trying her best to melt through the floor and failing miserably. "Well, I – I just don't think I'm going…"_

_"C'mon, Bella," Mike wheedled. "Just come. Promise me one dance. Just one."_

_He put his hand on Bella's arm._

_Edward suddenly yanked Bella away from Mike in a whirl of bronze hair and beige corduroy, seething behind his silver retainer._

_"Bella isn't going to dance with you, Mike!" Edward snapped; fierce shining teeth and venomous tongue. "Give it up!"_

_Mike straightened up, not reaching Edward's gangly five-feet-and-six-inches, but blustering great pompous blond machismo taking over his babyfat frame until Bella felt the tension pulse between the two sixth-graders. "You're not her master, Edward. Bella can do whatever she wants."_

_"She doesn't want to go to the dance!"_

_Edward's angry eyes caught Bella's through the curtain of her hair. He looked at her with blazing eyes that she would, years later, learn to be passionate, but in this moment, Edward was only a vision of schoolyard fury and the glare that marred his cherubic face looked mean, despite its base in secret pleading._

_Bella boiled._

_She stuck her chin out defiantly, breaking through the mask of meekness and emerging from her hiding place, a snapping turtle; for the first time she could remember, she disagreed with Edward and – more than that, stronger, absolutely unprecedented in her mind… Edward was wrong._

_Edward was wrong to bully Mike and he was wrong to make decisions for her. He hadn't asked her to dance, and she'd overheard awful Lauren telling Jessica at the water fountains the day before that she not only planned to dance with Edward, but to kiss him, too._

_If Edward could go to the dance and maybe get kissed by someone as horrible as Lauren Mallory, Bella could say this:_

_"I do want to go to the dance, after all. But I'll dance with who I want, when I want. I don't have to promise either of you anything."_

_The wounded look in Edward's eye broke her heart, but he still didn't ask her to dance, so she turned on her heel and marched off to find Alice._

_She needed a poodle skirt._

- - - - -

I yawned and stretched my arms above my head, feeling every joint in my agéd young body crack and pop, hurting, feeling like my hips and ribs should be dark black-and-blue but not knowing why.

I flushed, feeling the stickiness in my pink underpants and blushing at the realization that I had touched myself in my sleep as I dreamt of Edward, but he had seemed so real… A beautiful angelic Edward made of frosted glass, hair tipped in flame and cheeks devoid of living rose, but fingertips so smooth and cool they soothed as they ignited; legs disappearing into a wisp at his knees like the trailing comet tail of a ghost and I looked through him as he touched me…

But the dream was – not quite a nightmare – but far from perfect, far from right, and I knew, even as he'd made me shudder and come around his fingers, that this Edward was not real.

His eyes glowed like cursed jade, endlessly passionate, but empty, insatiable… his eyes didn't know me.

He didn't _love_ me.

Edward had always loved me, even when I couldn't see it. It shone from his eyes unwaveringly, not my candle on the water or my lighthouse in the storm, but the stars that shone through darkness and cradled all around the earth in unfathomable certain fire that made me feel small and embraced by something larger, greater, _good_.

I rolled out of bed and put my head in my hands, feeling nausea well up against my cottonmouth.

This dream Edward had not been _good_. His eyes were hungry, seductive, burning green with intensity, finally devoid of the despairing guilt that colored them when Edward was real and whole and touching between my legs, the beautiful cold embodiment of everything that once had been beautiful come back and buzzing inside my brain, twisting and reeling in something terrible and glorious and I hoped he would come back because Edward made me whole.

I shrugged into my robe half-heartedly, still feeling the ache in my muscles and the bile in my throat matching the break in my heart beat for beat.

Dream Edward had kissed me, and I felt like something was gone.

- - - - -

_"Just talk to him!" Alice urged, rolling her eyes at her scowling best friend as she sat tearing a cheese string to greasy bits in the cafeteria. Bella looked up darkly from beneath her brows, her glare stopping even exuberant Alice in her chewing of chicken salad sandwich._

_Four days had passed and Bella continued to refuse every sympathetic advance made by Edward and every hopeful approach of Mike. It was the longest she had ever gone without speaking to Edward, and she missed him somatically, her heart tugging with every step she took that wasn't in his direction… and she still saw him nearly all day every day, Forks being too small to avoid overlap in its school scheduling. She tried to avoid even looking at him, because every time her eyes slid his way, there he was, looking right back at her, pleading wordlessly._

_Alice sighed and ruffled her newly-black shorn hair. "Bella, he misses you. He's just a moron. You know he didn't mean anything bad."_

_"Yeah, and um, Bella?" butted in Jessica, pointing none too subtly towards a table in the back corner where Edward sat brooding, not touching the identical lunch Esme packed for him. "Edward won't stop staring at you."_

_Bella looked up out of habit and met Edward's green gaze. His eyes screamed apology though his face remained blank. He reached into his lunch bag and removed a red Macintosh apple where Alice had brought a pear; he held out it, proffering the red apple, her favorite fruit, to Bella between his pale cupped hands._

_Bella clenched her teeth and resolutely removed a green Granny Smith from her bag, allowing herself one small smirk before snapping a crisp bite._

- - - - -

The world disappeared in a thickhazy smog of white, so thick and cool that you can't see beyond the lattice slats of whitewashed wood, and your own hands look like mirage. The air smells sweet and smoky and wet like overgrown leaves and sulfur hot springs and wetclean babbling brooks, and you know it's day because you just left her, but you can't help but to need to feel the breeze, and quick as a wink, you dart out from beneath the large house's porch and zip across the lush green lawn, meandering towards the pull of the forest and tilting your face up in the white foggy sky to feel its wet caress.

Thinking round thoughts about Bell-La, you take no notice of the sharpcrackle sandalwood smell of the girl standing on the porch, staring through the mountainous mist at you with her mouth dropped disbelieving and her heart thumping painfully wrecked, her short black hair a mess atop her head, unable to move until the white fog swallows you whole and she puts her hand over her heart.

As soon as you're gone from her view, zooming in happy circuits around the forest floor, the black-haired pixie looks fruitlessly through the cloudcover towards the small house where She sleeps and breathes.

- - - - -

"What are you still doing home?" I asked Charlie, stopping in shock at the foot of the stairs and staring into the kitchen, where outside the window, the world was a white mess, like the ghostly sheen that covered Dream Edward and made me shiver.

Fogged in.

Even more surprising than his presence was the plate of pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon sitting out for me at my place on our small square kitchen table, right where I had once daringly sat with my sleep-shorts to my knees and Edward touched inside of me. We'd very nearly been caught by big Emmett, who stopped by to deliver Charlie some of Harry Clearwater's Fish Fry, a well-loved benefit from working at the garage near the Quileute rez.

"I been stayin' home for days now, Bells," Charlie said solemnly, drinking his coffee, salt-and-pepper mustache peeking out over the rim of the cup because my father was getting old. "I wanted to be here for you."

Guilt flushed me like a fever. "I'm sorry I haven't been home," I said softly. I took my seat and picked up my fork, idling at the edge of the plate. "Where did this come from?"

Charlie took another sip of his coffee and wiped his mustache with the web of his hand before answering me, gruff voice still level and quiet and calm – not sad. "Alice. She brought it by about ten minutes ago. You might want to microwave the pancakes."

"Alice shouldn't be worrying about me." I furrowed my brow and studied the scrambled eggs, taking in the black flecks of pepper and the orange sheen around the edges where syrup touched the fluffy yolks.

"Bells, you've brought the Cullens almost every meal since Edward passed," Charlie said sagely. "Let someone take care of you, now. You need it. Prob'ly more than they do."

"Dad… they're – they _were_," I corrected, trying to ignore the sudden aching pain in the back of my throat at my words, "his _family_."

Charlie nodded, paternal and slow. "Yup. And he made sure that he and you were each others' whole lives. I woulda worried more about how much you were wrapped up in each other, honestly, 'cause you were too damn young to be so serious, and don't argue with me about it 'cause it's true of Alice and that Hale boy, too, but… I always trusted Edward to do right by you. And Bella? You deserve to grieve more than anyone, and I don't see you doin' it. That worries me."

I sat in stunned silence, to shamed and humbled to speak, wanting to cry again but refusing, unable, and not quite sure why. That was the most Charlie had ever spoken to me at once in my entire life. I picked at the bacon, watching small red tangles of flesh fan out across my plate as I broke it into pieces.

Charlie was right to have believed that Edward would only ever do the right thing for me, but he was so wrong that I had the right to grieve the way Alice or Carlisle or Esme did. I turned the ring around my wedding finger three times without realizing it, thinking of his last night alive.

_i need you._

_i want you._

_right_

_now._

_I can't take this experience from you and disappear into the night. I could never live with myself_, he had said, and both kept and broken both promises.

"Bells?"

I looked up startled and felt guilty for Charlie's concerned brown eyes. I swallowed and looked down into my plate again, needing desperately to avoid the torture of his quiet devotion.

"I'm sorry, Dad," I said softly, sincerely. "I – just – I don't…_ know_…"

- - - - -

_Bella shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, fiddling with the cats' eye rhinestone glasses Alice had perched across her nose. They had no frames, and her pink poodle skirt was two inches too long and made of felt, a simple Cut'N'Sew Pattern from Forks Needle – Alice had one to match but in red, Angela Weber one in Fiesta blue – and Alice had insisted point-blank on tying Bella's long hair back in a ponytail held with pink chiffon._

_Without her dark veil of hair, Bella felt naked._

_It didn't help that He was staring at her from the corner, his hair all slicked back in a bouffant to rival Elvis Presley and a leather jacket like James Dean and a scowl as grotesquely handsome as Marlon Brando. Angela had pointed the last one out and giggled that if his intensity burned any hotter, Edward would be dropping to his knees at any moment shouting "BELLAAA!" and Alice snorted and quickly covered her nose, embarrassed, and Bella pretended to understand the joke and managed a meager giggle._

_Bella looked down at her feet in their white kid socks against the scuffed wooden dance floor of the Forks D.A.R., wishing Alice hadn't disappeared to a dark corner with Jasper and that Angela weren't lurking around the concession stand because Ben Cheney was selling cotton candy and popcorn and Coke. Without them to hover behind or distract her, and without the protection of her brunette armor, Bella could only focus on Edward and the way his pegged jeans made his legs look less scrawny and how nice his hair looked tonight and the raw, scrubbed-clean hurt look in his green eyes._

_But the music was crooning that he ain't nuthin' but a hound dog, cryin' all the time, and Bella stuck out her chin and refused to buckle and crawl back to him. He didn't even like-like her; she couldn't understand why he bossed her around in front of Mike in the first place._

_It wasn't like Edward cared._

_Was it?_

_"Hey, Bell," said a voice just behind her shoulder, and Bella jumped, her bony shoulder knocking Mike Newton hard in the soft lower palate of his chin._

_Across the dance floor, Edward smirked._

- - - - -

For hours you feel free and warm and it's so nice to be out in the daytime and able to stretch your legs that you run and run and run, up the craggy side of Mount Baker and down into the brook, splashing and laughing and you roll around in the wet dewy green grass and purple thistles and deadly blackeyed Queen Anne's Lace in a clearing devoid of trees and teasing human scents and you're so happy that you could burst and you start to sing under your breath a melody that tastes like Her.

Bell-La… as the white fog fades and rises and spreads into the dark inky velveteen blackness of night, your burning hunger for Her reawakens and you find with some surprise that don't mind the idea of her soft voice caressing your ears again and you're almost looking forward to that blurred look in her boring brown eyes and of only three things you're certain: first and foremost, Bell-La has the sweetest floralsoft delicious nectar you've ever tasted; second, she no longer seems quite so ugly as before your fingertips had supped inside her – plain, diminutive, yes, but ugly no longer; and third, most irrevocably and completely and all-consuming…

_you_

_want_

_her._

With singleminded determination and a freeflying liberty groomed from the white fog of morning, you sail back on devil's wings to the little blue house and at the first steadied sleeping beat of Her heart, you slip through the glass of her window with as much ease as you floated in the glacial water of the brook by the meadow.

- - - - -

_Bella blushed. "Mike, I'm so sorry!" She buried her face in her hands._

_Mike laughed, even as he held his throat and fleeting thoughts of a crushed larynx raced through his mind. "The only apology I'll accept is a dance."_

_Bella's shoulders sagged beneath the weight of fairness and justice and middle school manipulation and burgeoning men._

_"OK."_

_Mike reached for her hand and Bella proffered her elbow; their socks slipped against the varnish of the age-old Brazilian wood floor. "Hound Dog" twanged to a rollicking close and Ella Fitzgerald's voice washed over the room, crooning about the blue moon seeing her standing alone, and even as Mike put his hands on Bella's hips with palms so sweaty and hot she felt them through the felt of her pink poodle skirt, Bella's eyes flickered to Edward, knowing just what he was there for, admitting to herself deep down where he couldn't see that she wished it were him she was dancing with, he was the one she said prayer for._

_Old Mrs. Cope of the D.A.R. strictly enforced that the Forks middle schoolers kept their dance partners a forearm's length away, so Bella relaxed minutely as she and Mike swayed on the spot, her own clammy hands on his shoulders._

_Suddenly a warrior arm wrapped in black leather curved into the space between Bella's twiggy body and Mike's triangular frame and socked Mike square in his soft gut, sending him reeling backwards three steps and a surprisingly graceful turn._

_And then there suddenly appeared before Bella the only one her arms would ever hold, cradling his sore hand and glaring at Mike in icy fire. Bella made to put her hands on her hips petulantly, intent to show Edward that she was her very own little woman, but Edward's arms were around her and his face was buried in the top of her head and he sang "Please adore me" along with Ella into the pink chiffon of the scarf Alice tied into Bella's long pretty hair._

_"You can't tell me what to do," Bella whispered into Edward's neck._

_"I just don't want to share you," he murmured back, and Old Mrs. Cope buzzed over and swatted the back of Edward's coiffed head with a ruler, muttering darkly about inappropriate personal touching._

- - - - -

Charlie actually deigned to set his cup down, the knock of ceramic on wood a decisive drop of a gavel. "And you won't know, Bells, for a long time. But you are not alone. I lost your mom. I know it's not quite the same thing, but might as well be, and I will not look you in the eye and lie to you. There's some days I'm still not sure I really know."

I swallowed and couldn't meet Charlie's gaze and I felt somehow that I was even emptier than I had been moments before, my brain suddenly aching.

I had no idea what Charlie meant when he said he'd lost my mother.


	6. ilia thetis venus

First and foremost, I'm so sorry that this chapter took nearly two weeks. I got so depressed at some other fanfiction I was reading that it was hard to rustle up my own muse... does that happen to anyone else?

Again, I will answer your reviews and your PMs as soon as I can, I wanted to get the chapter out first. Writer's guilt owns me. However, I have read every message that I've gotten and I love you all; your questions are incisive and I'm rubbing my hands in evil mastermind glee as you unwittingly stumble across my clues (or the opposite). **nicnicd**, **amymorgan**, and the girls at** /l_l** made me smile as I tried to fend off my writer's block and quested to retrieve my muse. The usual suspects keep me sane, special thanks to **le moulin**, **love pollution**, **just recycling **and **stella luna sky**.

The biggest inspiration of all this week was my shortlisted nominations for **Best Undiscovered Erotica** and **Most Original Storyline** at the** Indie Twific Awards**! Many thanks to **hmonster4 **and **gustariana**, and to everyone who has and -- hopefully will continue -- voting for _Ars Moriendi_! I'm SO excited, humbled, and honored! Please help spread the word about _Ars Moriendi_ to your Twific-lovin' friends. :)

My one-shot _Lavender _is up this week for voting at the **Age of Edward** contest, as well. So much to read and to see, I'm all a-dither.

I own nothing.

**This chapter contains a mild scene of unintentionally violent sexuality. **As both a survivor of rape and a writer of a story with sensitive themes, I urge everyone to comply with requests for warnings and maintain that the safety of your readers is worth far more than a complaint of a "spoiler." I could never claim to know what is a trigger for anyone else; I only know my own -- and I like to be given that warning and that choice back. http(colon-slash-slash)www(dot)petitiononline(dot)com(slash)rapeless(slash)petition(dot)html

* * *

_The doorbell sounded loudly once, then almost immediately again._

_Esme blew hair out of her face as she scooped Mary Alice into her arms, fighting against being hit with enraged little fists all the way to the door._

_The twins had only just begun walking, and Mary Alice spent nearly all of her time toddling at top speed after a terrified Jasper, who had grown quite complacent with being able to simply walk away from Mary Alice when she crawled on him too much, and no longer had that luxury._

_He was not adjusting well._

_Edward was different; he walked only with a purpose, and seemed uncommonly steady on his feet for an eighteen-month old, as though he'd been practicing in secret until he felt he was sufficiently accomplished in his gait to show the world._

_Charlie stood on the other side of the heavy door, dressed in full uniform but hair and eyes disheveled, holding Bella at arms' length like a bomb as she raged, pound-for-pound a Force Five Gale to match Mary Alice._

_"Charlie," said Esme in surprise, well aware that Renee took nearly sole care of little Bella while Charlie worked long hours as the town's deputy, trying hard to earn his brass and provide better. "What's wrong?"_

_"Can you take Bella?" he asked simply, dark eyes apologetic. "I'm sorry to drop a fourth baby in your lap, but… just for a little while…"_

_Esme had never seen the calm cop look quite so disconnected, and poor Bella was a sorry sight: her fine, downy baby hair in a thick knot at the back of her head, romper suit straps tangled around her shoulders, one little frilly sock missing and face screwed up and red. Her bottom looked heavy and it didn't take Esme long to deduce the poor girl's diaper was wet._

_"Where's Renee?" She asked, although she already knew._

- - - - -

All day I thought of Edward as I had known him, soft and warm, and compared him against the Dream Edward that visited me in the night and touched me with fingers made of glass. It was so different than the way he'd felt the last night of his life, and I wondered why my subconscious had to remind me, even in the respite of sleep, that he was dead.

It wasn't bad. It wasn't uncomfortably cold, though I had a tingling chill in the pit of my stomach as I slept, and his plasticine fingers didn't feel hard and unyielding, just smoother and less receptive than his calloused beautiful boyish hands…

Edward had always seemed to derive as much of his own pleasure from touching me as I got in receiving his loving touch. He almost never let me touch him – the first time had been the Homecoming dance, the night he gave me his ring, and I think the sight of his ring sparkling on my hand as I moved it over his smooth skin did him in more than my actions – but for all of his reluctance he grew to love touching me, usually finding his own orgasm in watching me reach mine.

It seemed the same last night in Dream Edward. When Edward was alive it was a slow climb and steady burn, as much in my heart as anywhere else, but last night… he shattered me, and I fell against the bed in a million pieces in a way I never thought possible outside of the pages of tattered Harlequin novels, and his new smoothcool fingers felt so good, so confident, inside me…

I lay back against the pillows and closed my hands against the empty darkness, imagining Edward, a beautiful amalgam of him as I had loved and he who had beautifully broken me last night, all warm soft hands and flame-tipped hair with loving eyes and legs like a comet's trail streaking across my sky, brilliancy and beauty, and now he's faded below the horizon leaving me alone and blind in blackness.

But I couldn't think of that now, as my fingers pretended to be him, and I could hold him close for just a few minutes and feel as though his light still gave me love, life, meaning.

I thought about his eyes the first time Edward learned what I felt like inside, and the smell of him on my sheets. I tried to find the soft sponged place inside that Dream Edward found so perfectly, insistently, deliciously…

I sighed and felt myself tightening around my fingers and imagined Edward's enamored sigh of my name –

- - - - -

"Bell-La," you murmur, moving towards where She writhes on the bed, ignoring the flames licking your bones in favor of the frighteningly sweet possibility of licking Her. Her unmistakable scent has wrapped its arms around you in a cloyingly luscious embrace, pulling you with flavorful tentacles towards the juncture between Her legs where Her small sweet fingers are playing, sliding back and forth and shining and your tongue wets your lips to ready them to steal that softness from her because it's _yours_ and _you need it_ and you slowly sink onto her bed and crawl over her thinpale legs:

A predator stalking his prey.

- - - - -

_"Oh, Miss Bella," Esme sighed, fastening Bella's romper suit back on properly after cleaning up the now-smiling baby. "You are such a pretty girl. Don't break hearts like your mommy, okay? Because I have a feeling it'll be my little boy's if you do."_

_"Eddur?" Bella asked as if she'd understood, eagerly looking around for her friend._

_Esme laughed and picked up Charlie's little girl, balancing her against a hip. "Let's go find him."_

_Nary two steps out of the room, Jasper came sailing down the hall, shouting for help, as Mary Alice ran full tilt behind him, hands outstretched and grabbing at his shoulders and whiteblond hair._

_"No, Marialice!" he yelled, pushing her pinching hands away. "No touch! Please?" Then he looked up at Esme and baby Bella, eyes round. He pointed at Bella, who had never interested him much, as she was just so small, and besides, if he got too close to the brunette little thing, Edward got angry and scratched at him. Bella wasn't worth the trouble. "Why she here?"_

_"Mary Alice, you stop touching Jasper," Esme chided gently, patting a restraining hand against the soft back of her bright yellow coveralls. "Bella is here to play with us for a while," she explained gently._

_"Play?" Bella chirped, tugging on Esme's long hair with her chubby fist. "Play Eddur?"_

_"Yes, yes, yes. Let's go find Edward."_

_Esme found Edward in the family room, just where she'd left him this morning, sitting quietly on the floor with his ganglypale legs tucked under him, blithely flipping through the pages of a Goldenbook as though he knew the words. Esme wondered sometimes just how much Edward did know. His bright green eyes seemed to hold an ancient soul._

_"Eddur!" cried Bella, squirming in Esme's arms._

_Edward looked up and a beatific smile broke across his cherubic face, framed in tendrils of titian hair. "Bullah," he sighed._

_Esme stifled a giggle. Her eighteen-month-old was swooning._

_She set Bella down carefully on the carpet before the pale little monster wriggled her way right out of Esme's arms, and Bella crawled quickly her where Edward sat and crowed at him, almost knocking him down as she used him as an anchor to pull herself to a seated position._

_Bella garbled something soft at Edward, earning a smile and another sigh of 'Bullah' just as a loud crash and the harmonic wails of Mary Alice and Jasper rang out from the little redhead's bedroom and Esme turned her back on the quieter pair to rush down the hall._

- - - - -

She is so soft and tender below you, still moving to Her own song, not noticing the shiver of cold on Her skin that is your breath for being too caught up in the shudders of Her muscles as your presence pervades Her conscious subconscious and unconscious mind, filling Her with your scent and taste and touch topped off with her lover's face, opening Her wider to you in want.

"Ed-werd," she mewls, a soft pricking cry like a kitten, and it hits you like a lightning bolt in the center of your insatiable stomach –

_Ed-werd_ is what she calls her lover, the man who spilled against her sheets and whose face she sees in her mind as She feeds her fingers your nourishment, your sustenance, yours yours Yours.

Anger wells up in the base of your roiling need even as you settle Just So over Her body so She can feel you and not Ed-werd, she can feel how

_you_

_want_

_her_

and through the electric current of your shimmer passes the heavy thick syrupsweet never-ending want for Her body to meet with yours into Her soft white skin and Her

_big brown eyes_

open wide and her pupils are blown so dark and wide and wet and bright with darkness and black and pleasure and pain and want and need and nighttime that you fall into them and tangle against her helixes and synapses firing shoot through your mind until you can almost think and you murmur her name against her neck – _Bell-La, Bella_ – as your tongue slides lavishly down her long white neck, your shining pearlescent venom leaving a trail that shines in the moonlight pouring in like cream through her window.

You watch purring in delight as your venom sinks sweetly into her skin and her blood rises to the white surface in a long pinkpurplebrown bruise, soft and wounded and slow to heal.

You can see your reflection in the dark of her eyes, brightwhite like a lie, candlelight hair swirling around your head Her lips are so pink and open and Her fingers are wet as they brush against your cheek and you turn your head quickly to catch them in your cold mouth, making Her gasp, releasing against her thigh in a long shuddering suck that's so close to the place it should be, and She tastes like summer stone fruits and you twist her fragile fingers around your tongue stealing every drop, not noticing as one small bone cracks in your fervor and swells pulsing with warm blood and She cries out in a single sob, tensing in a way you don't like, and the base of your belly flip-flops in a new way that worries you, like you've turned inside-out and hung out to dry, and you pull back to see Her purple fingertip sticky with your cold venom and there's an urge you've never know and you gently, so gently, cup the back of Her head in your hand and lay Her back to her pillows, other hand smoothing up and down the softrounded smoothwhite length of her belly, one finger circling twice the tiny little hollow –

"Bell-La," you say softly, taking her mangled hand between your own, sliding it across your lips softly, breathing more death into Her tiny blue string veins, your milkgreen eyes wide and staring right into the alive brown staring emptyfull space of hers, something changing, growing inside you and you're frightened.

- - - - -

I opened my eyes when my finger hurt terribly and I felt the bone shatter around something liquid and suddenly I was staring into Dream Edward's green eyes, not nearly so empty as last night but drenched in icyhot fear as he looked tremulously back at me, holding my head and my belly and his glass lips gliding over my injured hand – how had that happened? Why would I dream myself into even more pain? – in soft apology as he sang me my name.

I touched his face gently and noticed its hollow lightness, the cold of his heartless state soothing the ache of my bones and he closed his eyes and he smiled and my heart broke because it was just the same smile I remembered, beautiful white teeth.

"Edward," I sighed, still loving how he touched me as his fingertips spread circles over my stomach, feeling me all over, and his face changed and hardened like stone, melting and reforming into something alien and ghostly and with the darksharp remnants of carved out hollow pieces and his white teeth gleamed in the moonlight shining in through my window and I was frightened as he set his hardsoft mouth against my neck again and growled, low and purring in his chest, male and predator and primal and my name spilling from deep in his chest, _bella bella bella_.

His mouth pulled at me as he slid down my body, hands sliding over my skin reading my Braille and playing my chords, fingers grasping and touching and finding new places and seeming to reach inside me from all angles and feel my organs, tightening my lungs with frosty chill and clenching somewhere deep inside below my stomach and holding my heart in his hands like he always had and always would, turning it all around.

"Oh, Edward," I whispered, watching as his face lowered to the curve of my stomach and his lips brushed lower and lower towards the curve of my lowest bones and the wisp of brown curl that Edward liked even though it embarrassed me and Alice asked me twice to let her wax it off with molten sugar and Dream Edward's back rippled and strengthened and arched like a cat as he took in the smell of me, hands running up and over my wide hipbones and the long stretch of the sides of my thighs. "Edward, I miss you."

He looked up at me then from between my legs, mouth razing iced air over my pink skin and making me burn, but his green eyes were lost and sorry and he didn't speak in words, didn't say he missed me, didn't tell me he knew who I was, couldn't tell me where his heart now lay.

- - - - -

_Bella giggled and threw her little hands all over Edward's shoulders, not knowing that she hit him a little too hard, chanting "Eddur Eddur Eddur" like it was the only word she knew – she did know six others – and he laughed, catching her hands like pattycake._

_Bella picked up his discarded Goldenbook, studying the illustration of Big Bird and Snuffleupagus on the front before throwing it down in Edward's lap, big round brown eyes smiling pleadingly to him, sticky hands turning pages in his lap._

_And Edward 'read' to her, garbled nonsense to Esme's ears when she walked past their quiet room carrying tearstained Jasper after having locked Mary Alice away in her crib for a much-needed nap. She stopped for just a moment, wishing she had time to unearth her camera from Carlisle's crowded desk to take a picture as Bella's small head rested against Edward's shoulder, his arm around her shoulders as she happily babbled over his words and pointed, cooing, to the pictures in his book._

_Bella's belief that Edward's half-words told her the story of those pictures was absolutely tangible._

_Bella's belief in Edward, unwavering._

- - - - -

Her sweetseeping scent is even stronger here, where you need to be, where you're staring transfixed at the way Her skin and muscles move as though you've never seen anything real before and this is the first moment of your life.

_Ed-werd_ rings out in a soft purr up above you and suddenly there's a small warm weight on your head and you dart up and away only to see her hand reaching out and you realize that smallfluttering heaviness was her broken hand, running through the flame of your hair, and now She looks so sad that Her scent is fading away like water and that can't be okay, She can't be water and falling and darkness because

_she_

_is light_

and you can't let Her fade, not before you can taste her incandescence and use it to relight your own burn, you have to get out of this darkness and She is the key.

Your face lowers and you inhale greedily, stealing her scent with her essence, and you luxuriate so fully in the silksoft tang of her citrus and salt and blue and red and white white white and pollen and stamen and orchid and kisses and then your mouth descends, longsticky tongue smoothing and stealing and tasting and she makes a beautiful noise and the corners of your lips turn up and you feel something new.

Something Light.

Something inside your ribs feels like it's bubbling up, filling with air and sun and strawberry and kittens and pink chiffon and sparkling like a single multifaceted diamond, throwing prismatic rainbow over everything your suddenly opened eyes see.

That warm weight finds your head again but you're not afraid this time, knowing the gentle touch of her hand as her fingers slide through your hair and press your mouth closer to the source of Her sweetness, nourishing you and nurturing you and letting you take Her away.

- - - - -

_Once Esme returned Jasper to Rosalie, who every day looked a bit worse for wear in trying to support herself and her son all alone, shunned by her family and the scourge of the conservative town, but who today had regained just an ounce of her formerly radiant sparkle when she told Esme that a new mechanic had started at the garage near the Rez where she had found work, a boy from Alaska with curly brown hair and dimples, a boy who didn't leer at her when he smiled, Ernest or Emmett or something like that, she darted to Alice's small yellow bedroom to check on her sweet little girl, who still napped peacefully – the only time those little hands weren't grabbing and those little legs were still! – in her white crib._

_Edward and Bella were still quiet, but Esme didn't worry. Edward was always quiet, and Bella was safe with Edward._

_Esme headed into the brand new kitchen that she and Carlisle just added onto the house, looking out over the unfinished wood porch that she already imagined her babies sunning themselves on in the summer and envisioned long autumn evenings with Carlisle, sitting tangled on a polished porch swing, drinking red California wine and talking under the stars._

_She smiled at the bric-a-brac board above the stove, decorated with little tidbits she'd found at the dustymusty antiques bazaar in Port Angeles: little white milkmaids with blue pinafores and tulip hats, Mickey and Minnie Mouse holding hands, great gray majestic ibises. She set a pot of chicken soup to boil and heard a thump from the living room, and so set to check on her precious Edward and Charlie's Bella._

_She looked to the fading light out the window and frowned, wondering just when someone would return for the little girl._

_She stared in wonder at the sight before her when she reached the entryway to the ivory room._

_Bella stood on wobbly legs, holding the edge of the coffee table for dear life, her pudgy little knuckles bright white with effort. Her big brown eyes were wide and trained on Edward's face where he stood, a few feet away, arms out and encouraging, soft smile on his round angel's face._

_He clucked at her, finishing a pep talk in baby's babble with a sweet, "Bullah… yes."_

_Bella shook her head and swayed on her feet. "No," she whimpered, clutching harder to the table._

_Edward nodded, gesturing towards himself with fat toddler arms, cooing in a voice no girl could resist. "Yes."_

_Bella's brow furrowed in concentration and her lips pouted out like a duckling's bill. Edward grinned at her, steady on his feet, singing soft songs under his breath._

_Esme held her breath, knowing that the way Bella's knees bowed out, she wasn't anywhere close to ready to walk._

_"Bullah."_

_Bella took a deep little breath, let go of the table, and though she knew she would fail, for Edward, she took a step forward and tried._

- - - - -

Sunlight streamed in through my window and I groaned, wondering when I had fallen asleep and why my hand hurt so badly and why I was nauseous again after not having cried the day before. I rolled onto my stomach and felt it roiling, overflowing yet empty and the only thing I could feel was angry at Edward, or Dream Edward, or dead Edward, or beautiful living Edward on the last night of his life not living up to his promise.

_I can't take this experience from you and disappear into the night._

_I could never live with myself._

"And you didn't have to," I mumbled, gritting my teeth against the bile and feeling the vertebrae down low near my hips popping and grinding against their disks like slowsliding tectonic plates, and I was their earthquake.

I turned a throbbing head towards my nightstand and beyond it, the window, wishing the curtains might shut themselves and block out the light, and I could have sworn that I saw the streaming misty trailing tail of my Dream Edward slipping out into the abyss of bluewhite bright.

On my nightstand in a small pink wooden frame stared a faded photograph of my father and a little brunette baby girl I assumed to be me and a brown-haired woman whose face I didn't know. I reached out to take the photograph when I caught sight of my hand, the fingers black and swollen and needing to be splinted.

Circulation was cut off on the fourth finger of my left hand by a silver and diamond ring that I knew to be Edward's. I sighed, my dolorous head dropping dolefully down to the pillows again, sore hand stroking the white spot he left on my sheets, relishing perverse and masochistic in the way the tiny fibers of the cheap cotton sheets scraped against the blackpurple blue of my broken fingers.

_just a little,_

_edward._

_please._

Now it caused me physical pain, too.


	7. pallor in ceterus

**Thank you to everyone who has sent sweet PMs about voting for Ars Moriendi at the Indie Twific Awards -- http(colon)(slash)(slash)www(dot)theindietwificawards(dot)com -- I am again terrible at responding to reviews and PMs, but they mean more to me than you know. AM now has 200+ alerts, which tickles me; if you're reading, please drop me a line either as a review or a PM to let me know if I'm doing something, anything, right. This story makes me nervous and twitchy and very unsure of myself, when normally words are the one thing for which I normally think I have a knack. **

**nicnicd continues to be just too good to me and has rec'd me at The Fictionators blog, and Juliejuliejulie sent perhaps the most amazing PM I've ever received, so thank you for that. rhpsfaerie rec'd AM in her story as well; thank you to every single person who reads and who recommends my writing to others.**

**To that end, I'm currently obsessed with The Caged Bird by Kristen Nicole, whose Edward makes me sweat and whose Bella I genuinely root for. Bare, of course, has only amazing things to come and makes me tingle, and stella luna sky makes me laugh and is beautiful. :)**

**Everlasting thanks to my harem of BETAs, who are even better friends than grammarians and stylistas. **

* * *

_"God, Bella, you are so beautiful," Edward breathed, warm air escaping him in a soft puff and tickling Bella where his head rested against her open thigh, watching her closely as he always did, memorizing the light reflecting from her dew in the morning light as they languished, alone, solemn, warm in Bella's small bed as the rest of their classmates lazed through first hour._

_Edward exhaled shakily as his eyes compulsively traced every curve and shadow of Bella's slim center finger as it disappeared again and again; he knew the frayed triplicate pink lines at the insides of her white knuckles, webbed gently with lacework blue veins that Edward worshipped and feared for carrying her life through her body, connecting her heart to her fingertips to the sea of pink his mind swum in now, and hers was the only life that mattered._

_Bella shivered and her small nipples tightened as Edward's insecure breath rhythmically caressed her sensitive skin, driving her fingers to seek deeper, to pretend harder._

_For the fourth time, Edward spent himself in a dozen strokes of his own hand or less, wetting Bella's sheets and belly; one teardrop pearl netted sparkling against the nestle of her brown curls, ebbing with the rocking of her hand, and Edward had groaned at the sight of a part of him, some of his life, touching her so intimately, touching that skin. As always, his head rested on her open, welcoming thigh, feeling her strong pulse comforting his cheek where they touched._

_"I wish I knew what you were thinking," Edward whispered. His hands clenched to fists at his limp sides, trying with every shred of humanity that he possessed not to touch Bella, not to defile her, not to ruin her, because she was an angel and he was horrible, a demon, for thinking of her the way he did, he had to be, and he could never let her know how he wanted her._

_"You're touching me," Bella murmured back, voice strained and soft like velvet. "Your fingers… your mouth… oh, god… Edward… it's always you, Edward, always you…"_

_Edward swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing against the thin skin of Bella's thigh. "How am I touching you? How – I mean – I – don't – " he trailed off and turned his face against Bella's thigh again, trying to hide his traitorous face from her view while soaking up as much of her distinct scent as he was allowed._

_Bella made a soft sound deep in her throat, a mewl like a kitten cry. "Inside me, Edward. You're touching inside me, with your fingers. And you're kissing all over my chest, Edward, you've never put your mouth anywhere but my face but it'd be so nice…"_

_Edward was silent for a long time, and Bella closed her eyes in regret rather than pleasure: her words spooked him, irked him… disgusted him? Edward never expressed his desires, except that first time, and he'd looked about to spontaneously combust in shame and panic and looked about to cry both of the rare times it'd been questioned by Bella since._

_"Edward, I – "_

_"What if I hurt you?"_

_His voice was tiny, and she felt the fearful quiver of his lips as they brushed her skin softly, completely incapable of causing her pain._

_Bella smiled in trepidation, her fingers sliding away from her own skin and for the fourth time, traced her sandysweet flavor onto Edward's trembling lip. The tip of his velvet tongue met her fingertip briefly in his haste to claim his prize. With an innocently wanton gleam in his green eyes, he traced the tiny circles of Bella's fingerprint with the tip of his tongue._

_"You won't hurt me," Bella breathed softly, faithful in every way to the boy shifting carefully up onto his knees before her._

_Edward stared down at the girl lying trustingly and open beneath him, wanting to know her every goosebump and freckle and the direction of every flyaway hair._

_He had imagined this woman so many times he had to pinch his thigh to make sure he wasn't dreaming her into life, a pale specter with big brown eyes so innocent and wide and sultry with heavy lavender lids dappled with twines of precious veins._

_Every night before he fell asleep he imagined their wedding night. The ring he planned to give her in another month's time traveled with him in his pocket every day, and when he climbed into bed he examined the small silver circle and nested diamond he wished were bigger, and marveled at how dainty Bella's fingers were to be thin and slight and strong enough to bear this ring she didn't know existed._

_Thinking of Bella's hands became risky business after the age of eleven, when he'd suddenly found one day that trying to do pre-algebra problems with Bella was, quite frankly, a problem. She twirled her pencil between her white fingers, delicately nibbled at the silver of the eraser, groaned under her breath when the numbers vexed her, and for the first time in his life, Edward had understood why sex was considered an urge._

_He wanted those hands to touch his body in ways that even he never had._

_He wanted to hold back her curtains of brown hair and watch as her mouth enveloped his length. He remembered blushing furiously as the thought crossed his mind, and Bella asked him what was wrong, and he'd wanted to get up and claim that he needed water and run to the kitchen for a glass, but something was wrong and right and painful in the front of his pants and he was confused and mortified and knew beyond anything, anything, anything else that it was imperative that Bella never, never know._

_And that night was the first time he'd performed what would become his covert ritual. That first night, he'd spit on his palm when he felt his skin becoming raw, but slowly, over the years, he'd found lotion that smelled like Bella's skin when she was fresh and clean after a shower (he generally started with the image of her standing naked beneath the water, back arched and ass out, mysterious nipples small and pink and hard…) and a soft fleecy blanket that was close to the gentle caress of Bella's long, soft hair._

_He imagined the sounds she would make when they were married and she was his and he finally was allowed to lay claim to her however he wanted, allowed to put his mouth on every inch of her body and taste her and allowed not only to think terrible dirty things about her but… maybe… to do them?_

_But Bella was worth more than the mistreatment he imagined, surely, he would always chastise himself after, even while his belly was still sticky with want._

_Sometimes his fantasies were sweet and almost worthy of his Bella… he imagined how it would feel to remove her white wedding dress clasp by clasp, kissing her smoothpretty shoulders and long white back all the way down to her waist… laying her back against the soft bed and sucking at her pink fat responsive nipples until she was desperately wanting, then sliding so gently inside her as husband and wife that she would feel no pain…_

_But more and more often he was consumed with darker wants that were not gentle or tender or loving or anything he associated with the sweetsoft girl lying so trustingly before him; she opened herself up to him heart soul mind and body and her sleepy small smile told him that Bella had no idea how often he imagined tying her wrists with satin cords, leaving her lilywhite legs free to manipulate how he wanted – over his shoulders, tight around his waist, wide wide wide and high; how he wanted to push her pretty face against the pillows and sate himself in her from behind, delicious vulgarities hissing from his mouth as he bit at her winged shoulders, chipping away at his angel; the way eating lunch beside her every day had become physically painful with his desire to feel her throat squeezing around his cock and how so very badly he wanted to acquiesce to her surely-innocent pleas for him to make love to her, how he very nearly needed to possess her and consume her and own her and mark her and make her his in ways that no one could steal from him, ever._

_But now… Bella was young and pretty and his and so beautiful that it hurt a little, the sweet way she smiled encouragingly up at him and her small fingers clenched nervously at her sides, as though she thought he didn't want her like this, didn't love seeing her open and pink and wanting for him, didn't dream of it every moment of his life._

_"Edward," she crooned in sirensong, "Edward, please, you won't hurt me; I promise."_

_Almost paralyzed by indecision – moral conflict; his angel Bella on one shoulder wet and naked and eyes shining, begging him for release, to be allowed to fold her wings and the devil himself on the other shoulder, dark and frightening with Edward's own face and poisonous green eyes sullying Bella with his existence in her world, both whispering in crescendo the same thing:_

you

want

her.

_"Oh, Bella." Voice strangled, life lost to fear and refusal giving way, loosening, opening his throat to take in freshcold sweet air and sun and strawberry and kittens and pink chiffon and want and understanding and her fingers were back in that place when he looked down at her, rubbing small lines up and down around her clit as she waited for his conscience to catch up – "I love you."_

_Awkward, frightened, clumsy long fingers like knobble-kneed doe legs running scared from an apparition in the wetgreen forest, Edward reached forward and brushed his fingertips across Bella's pink skin, taking in the feel of her for the first time, his world turning upside-down._

- - - - -

"Bella," Alice said tentively, looking at me with big eyes from below her black bangs. "Can I tell you something kind of… personal?"

I furrowed my brow, trying to ignore the persistent ache in my head. "Of course."

Alice sighed heavily, a shifting skeleton in her black mourning clothes as she wriggled uncomfortably on my bedspread. Edward's stain was hidden by a periwinkle pillow. "Bella… I think I might be going crazy. Maybe something is wrong with my brain, too, like with… well, you know."

Edward's aneurism, hiding dormant in his beautiful mind as a cobra in sand, virulent and blackshiny waiting to strike.

My heart constricted; not Alice, too. "Why? What's wrong."

Alice, pretty Mary Alice who loved her twin brother so much, who I had known as long as I'd been alive and without whom Jasper simply couldn't… be, refused to meet my gaze. "I thought I saw Edward yesterday. He was leaving your house in the morning fog."

My heart stuttered and skipped and my breath came short and fast and I didn't know how to live for a moment as my lungs did something very strange with the air I held in them.

"I don't think that's crazy, Alice," I heard my voice say through the rushing in my ears, not knowing how the sounds had fallen from my lips in my stupor as the only words in my mind ran circular courses buzzing like bees –

_just a little,_

_edward._

_please._

_I can't take this experience from you and disappear into the night._

_i wish you were_

_real._

_I could never live with myself._

Maybe he hadn't. Maybe he had. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was.

- - - - -

You spread out on your back beneath the white porch and draw your hand lazily up and down, wanting but content, not frantic, the closest thing to peace you've found in your life as you think of Her.

Bella

You reel with flickering visions of a baby with Her eyes surrounded in white lace, and older taking Her first steps; She's fluttering in and out of the life of a woman with brown hair who looks like She would if life ran away without Her; She wore little white socks over her dainty white feet and held herself close to the wall of a gaudy big room filled with aluminum foil stars and the smell of burgeoning pheromones; and She panted and writhed for a red-haired boy whose life you wanted to end.

She was _yours_, not his, not this red-haired boy who haunted every moment of her life.

- - - - -

Through diamondine goggles that spun bluepurple yellow light like a kaleidoscope over my view, black light tunneling roundsharp wheels around the sides of my eyes, I saw my friend Alice's morose, nervous white face, sharing Edward's nose and the shape of his lips; her jaw smaller and heart-shaped, pointed at her chin like cupid.

"I hate him for leaving us," she whispered. "When I saw him, I was only happy for a second… and then I was so angry."

Just before the rippling pinprick black overtook my eyes in a hyperventilated faint, I thought of the blankness of his gaze last night when I professed that I missed him, and how his greenglowing gaze made it clear that he did not miss me back.

I had only cried once.

He left me when he promised never to go.

My world turned upside-down as I felt my head fall forward.

"Me, too."


	8. infractus quod electus

**1. **I am so sorry that this chapter took so long! Work has been insane.  
**2. **As a result of work being insane, instead of having a fic rec, I have a book rec -- yes, I work in the literary world in real life; yes, to answer one of your FAQ's, that is why I have a very practiced writing style. The incomparable **stella luna sky**, BETA harem extraordinaire **le moulin**, and I have all gotten to be a part of the Focus Group on an upcoming novel called **_Green_**, by Hayley Anne Perkins, and if you don't all go to www(dot)hayleyanneperkins(dot)com and sign up for the updates newsletter, then you're severely missing out. It's like (thegoodpartsof)Twilight and Harry Potter had a baby with Jack Kerouac, and made Jane Austen and Meg Cabot the godparents. I will be writing fic for this book as soon as it's released, and you all should, too. The romantic lead makes Edward look like chopped liver. Not even kidding.  
**3.** **ohyoudo**, **julie julie julie**, **Vixen1836**, and **/edwardville** make me smile ridiculously, and I once again thank the Indie Twific judges for awarding Ars Moriendi an award of Special Merit. :)  
**4. There is an FAQ on my profile now.** Have a question? Leave it in a review. Unless it'll spoil the plot, I'll answer it on the profile page.

* * *

"Are you sure you'll be OK, Bella?" Alice asked me, big eyes round with worry from my faint and aches and mysteriously fractured finger, as she stood in the shadow of her boyfriend at my front door at nightfall.

"She's OK, Liss," Jasper soothed. A spray of scars like constellations marred his face, a reminder of the accident on slick ice that broke Edward's bones and concussed me and left Alice with blood on her hands.

I could feel the blow that sent me to the ground and see the white stars behind my eyes, but I wondered what happened, and how I had fallen; I should have been crushed by the bumper of the blue van, but some strange angel saved me and I never thanked him.

Alice's large eyes like kittens' were wide and round and I thought of Edward's warm green gaze, so different, and the cursed jadeite of my Dream Edward, my night visitor, my ghostly lover who I had begun to crave with the weight of my bones.

I smiled at Edward's sister. "I'm OK, Alice. Really. I just didn't feel well when I woke up this morning, and I probably suffered dehydration all day."

Alice's eyes narrowed, Isis stretching long and lean. "Didn't feel well… how?"

I shrugged and felt the slow grind of my muscles' weave as the strained fibers pulled and protested, twisting around the gargoyle spikes of my bones as my shoulder gave a loud pop and Jasper winced. "Sore," I said with a wry smile, referencing the ghastly sound. "Nauseous, a bit. And my finger was broken."

Alice furrowed her smooth, pale brow: "Nauseous?" Her face was serious when her hand found my arm. "Bella, I know you and Edward were… that he wanted... But…"

_just a little,  
edward.  
please._

_I can't take this experience from you and disappear into the night.  
I could never live with myself._

_oh, edward, oh…  
please don't stop.  
it's okay._

_i wish you were  
real._

_i wish you were_

_real._

_i  
wish  
you_

_were real._

"No," I said quietly, and felt something twist against the lie, deep in a hidden part of my stomach, nudging at me from the inside and wanting to bite and claw its way free, but I felt a duty, a secrecy, a shame enough to keep it safely stored inside me, not wanting Alice and Jasper to see.

It was my truth: Only Edward shared it with me, and he died that night as he crept back inside his window after I stole something precious from him, took an essential part of his soul.

- - - - -

_Edward was lithe as a mountain lion when he pounced from the wide-open windowsill to the floor. He landed softly on the balls of his feet, as he did every night; he kicked off his shoes and tumbled into Bella's bed._

_"You're early!" She laughed delightedly. His legs tangled with hers beneath the sheets as he pulled her closer to press every line of their bodies together. Bella could feel the hard line of silken skin she liked to touch pressing against her through the sharp denim of his new school clothes, and she wanted to spread open the teeth of his zipper and devour what lay behind it._

_"Mmm," he groaned softly into the crook of her neck. She was babydown white and lily-of-the-valley, hooded pale purity drenched in sweetly scented wet that tickled his nose and made him ache. "I wanted to have more time with you tonight."_

_Bella rolled over, slid her arms around his lean waist and felt his heartbeat thrumming life through him. They had no idea that life would only spark inside him for another few hours; he had no intention then to pass on his life to Bella in her baby blue childhood bed._

_"I'm glad," she whispered._

_Edward touched his forehead to Bella's gently. "Someday, we'll be together all through the night." His voice was velvet in her ears. "We'll fall asleep together in a big white bed and I'll wake up with you in my arms."_

_And he kissed her, slow and sweet, like honey pouring from a spoon. When Edward kissed Bella, he fought back his demons tooth and nail, striving to keep from pulling her inside like a tempestuous spirit and letting her essence flow through his veins; he reminded himself sternly of his plans for their future, for their wedding night when he would kiss every inch of her white white body beneath her white white dress, and none of his darkness would stain her because the whitegold band around her finger freed him._

- - - - -

The sunset blinds your etched retinas in shades of red as you spy through the slats of the mansion's porch, measuring the danger of the blond-haired man approaching the steps of Her house. His jaw was square and his eyes pale and quick, and his face riddled with small scars. The blond man's arms stretched sinew between the bones beneath his sunbrushed skin, and he held his muscles like he had something to prove.

She answered the door half-held by the little black-haired girl with the sandalwood scent; the man paid little attention to Her and had eyes only for the curves beneath the smaller girl's clothes.

She looked different tonight in the bright red twilight. _Bella_'s skin looked smoother and her button nose straighter, the dark shadows beneath her eyes enunciating her emaciated cheekbones and making her face look marble and crystal and ice, lips red. Her brown hair falls in tangled curls around her shoulders and down cascading over her hollow hummingbird shoulders and fuller beautiful breasts meant for your tongue to taste as you feed from her every inch of smooth skin.

_bella bella bella bella bella bella bella bella bellabella Bella bella._

You squirm against the dirt, happy that the sun is setting and you can go to her soon; her scent sings to you on the night air and buoys you to Lightness as your swollen flesh begs happily with the contentment of knowing your acquiescence:

You will feed from Her tonight.

With a great liquidgreen polluted flash at the horizon line of the wet leafy Hum, the sun disappeared into seablack abyss and you stretch your long limbs and float up twisting into the breezecool young night air and there's buttery light drifting towards you from a window above your home beneath the white mansion's white porch, and curiosity and warmth and the smell of smoke and seashells and sin draw you towards the unknown glass.

Beyond the window, the blond boy and little dark-haired spark are tangled together in a seething mass of rolling roiling red and white skin; you fill with the evergreen stench of betrayal and disgust but you're fascinated, watching and wondering if She moves this way, if Bella could wrap around you with arms and legs and what would happen if you touched your teeth to her long neck and if her knee could perch over her shoulder, because you can see the depth of the blond boy's reach inside the black-haired sprite and you're hungry and wanting and emptying fast and your joy's turned to ravenous scorching need and blind possession and you tear your sticky fingertips from the butterwarm window, steamed with sex against the ice-shard sky, and flee to Her window, to Her room, to Her bed:

_bella bella Bella bella._

- - - - -

For Edward, the concept of marriage was something beautiful and full and rich and red, thick and sweet with support and love and unconditional understanding and the promise of soft mornings in bed and smiling babies that grew into close-knit siblings and young adults who brought lovers like family into the home and warmed it – glimmering coals in the hearth with happiness made possible only by our union: his understanding shallowly shaded only by Carlisle and Esme, even though he'd seen Rosalie and Emmett raise Jasper without marrying because they believed love was enough, even though he'd watched me fall on my face trying to take my first steps without my mother because she had decided that being a wife wasn't good enough for her dreams.

I leaned back against my bed and grew up.

I realized that he was not the righteous and perfect, leading me like a lamb with his virtuous shepherd's crook, so steady-footed and certain that love and marriage were the same, that to be wed was to be happy; nor was I right in thinking that we could only fail, that we would be just as happy together whether or not we tried to walk down Pastor Weber's pale cream aisle and pronounce a kiss before the entirety of town.

Both Edward, _and I_, were childishly skewed in our perceptions, poisoned equally by the fruit of our parents' pricklyfruit trees; Carlisle and Esme fed Edward sweet pinesap of happiness that blinded him; Charlie's quiet languor spread his spotted symptoms to me, filling the back of my throat and my tongue with bitterness I couldn't shake.

Edward didn't deserve to have his fluttering heart punished by my unfounded fears, but I deserved to be taken seriously, to be considered competent enough to have a say in my own affairs.

We loved each other so completely that we crippled each other.

It were as though he were just my brand of heroin: dark resin in my veins that spawned a brightdark ache, and I always wanted more, even if it meant selling the things that should have meant most to me… my beliefs, _my self_.

Though that wasn't quite fair, I reasoned as I readied myself for my Dream Edward's arrival, taking off my clothes and lying naked against my sheets still streaked with Edward's reluctant white semen… my sheets smelled musty and his sweet, comforting scent was gone; my bedclothes needed washing soon. Edward had never been harmful to me, not like a drug, not like a sickness that made me shake and sweat and steal; Edward was beautiful, a good heart and a good soul, strong and willing to believe in a better future for us, for me, than I had the strength to believe, because without him, I would never have tied my hair back and faced the world.

I would have stayed hidden behind my curtain of hair forever.

Now, I saw clearly, despite needed to learn to see through the blueblack blur of my burial veil.

- - - - -

_"Mmm," Bella moaned softly, writhing beneath him, his air-chilled hands beneath the t-shirt she wore as a nightgown, teasing at her small, pointed breasts. His fingers were cool but flushed with excited levity, rough at the tips from piano and guitar and being a boy but soft with his privileged upbringing and the curator's care he used to examine Bella's pinkest skin. "Edward… please…"_

_He shuddered and kissed the hollow beneath her ear, all breath and life and pulse meeting pulse. "Not here," he whispered, one hand trailing down to ghost over her white panties. He wanted someday for her to wear all black, sheer lace she could feel through, geometric anomalies in strings and triangles, and he would never share that. "Not with your dad sleeping in the next room. And not when I have to leave you after."_

_"But I'm ok with that!" Bella insisted, her hand mirroring his trail, slipping under the waistband of his crinkly new jeans, resting over burgundy briefs and feeling the wet spot where he wept wanting. "Edward, you know that I understand that your leaving doesn't mean you don't love me. I need you. I want you. Right now."_

_Edward exhaled through his nose sharply when her small hand squeezed, and Bella heard him swallow: a hopeful sound. His fingers tapped softly over the sensitive curve only he had ever seen, that he memorized every misdrawn line and the single darkflush freckle just inside a secret lip. Beneath her underwear she was brown and pink and white; she was the cream ivory keys of his piano, and he could draw the lullaby from her with the smallest effort._

_"No," he whispered softly, finally, dishonestly. "I do love you. And I do need you. And I do so, so want you." He kissed her face then – softly – finally – honestly. "I will only treat you the way you deserve. I can't take this experience from you and disappear into the night. I could never live with myself."_

_"Then at least let me see you," Bella begged, sliding her hand inside the slit of the burgundy cotton and feeling satin over sandstone, wanting to taste. "Let me touch you while your fingers are in me."_

- - - - -

Bella is waiting for you – _you, not Ed-werd_, not her red-haired lover, not her own small broken fingers, _you_; _your_ touch, _your_ tongue – when you glide through her chilled window, barely noticing the fiery burn that licks at your throat and face and convex of your ribcage at the quickbeating fluctuation of her awoken heart.

She lies naked atop her blue sheets, every inch marzipan and cherry divinity and frosted white strawberry nipples and burnt spun sugar sticksliding to the sweetness between her legs, and she sees you hovering above her faded floor, and her red cherry lips turn up at the edges and you feel a tremor run through you again at the sight of her face –

She's smiling for you.

She's happy… because of _you_.

"You did come," she breathes, and though you can't understand her words she didn't make his sound, his _ed-werd_, and you feel your mouth turn up too, smiling back with ghostwhite teeth as you cross the threshold of her vestal bed, not frightened any longer and ready to sate your need in her.

- - - - -

_"You look so beautiful like this," Edward whispered, staring down at the place where his fingers disappeared, wondering salaciously in the back of his lascivious mind if there would be a way to see this on their wedding night, to watch her body swallow him slowly over and over into the warm silken breaking point between her soft white thighs._

_She was _not beautiful_, she argued in her head; her legs splayed open without muscle tone and streaked inside with inexplicable stretching scars despite her thinness, her belly moved with his hand's every thrust and one breast was just a mite larger than the other and they looked flat as pancakes when she lay on her back like this and her body was blushing from her hairline to her nipples and her hair was all tangled where she writhed against the pillowcase and her fingernails were bitten and she could see their raggedness as she watched her own hand slide up and down over Edward's perfection._

_Edward exhaled hard and blinked away the mesmer clouding his eyes, trying to keep at bay the cloying cloud of pleasure, to prolong this moment, this night, feeling something dark well up beneath his heart as he looked at beautiful Bella with a part of him touching where no one else ever would and her fingers on him and for the first time he was brazen enough to bend his head and place a solitary kiss on one of her tiny nipples, flushed crimson red and so perfect he could cry and the moment the softstrange skin touched his mouth and he heard her whispered cry he was a man possessed and his lips opened and his tongue swept down to savor her around and around and her hand clutched his head to her chest and his hips shifted so that he lay in the forbidden vee of her open legs and her palm and thin fingers contracted around him as his hand shifted and twisted and pressed insistent inside her and she came like a tornado all over his fingers and she whispered his words of undoing:_

_"Just a little, Edward. Please."_

- - - - -

My dream lover was Edward gone beautifully wrong, tonight shining with leaves in his hair and Puck's wild smile on his angel face, a beautiful nude like the last Edward I had seen but churning clouds of ice where his legs should have been, and it didn't bother me, because his beautiful cock was still perfect and I wanted him inside me and I told him so silently without words as he moved over me on the bed.

I was surprised when he lifted my injured hand first, inspecting my swollenblack finger with the sweetest expression of sorrow.

"Bella," he murmured quietly, looking me in the eyes, "Bella…"

He kissed my finger, cold lips and hot hot heat, and my broken heart mended a little and the seams ripped again, because Edward was beautiful and dead.

- - - - -

_Edward felt his soul break in half as he studied the womanchild lying beneath him, trusting aphrodite, wicked succubus, wanting to take her and possess her and claim her and make her bleed red for him on her blue sheets, and to protect her and cherish her and honor her and keep her from ever feeling a moment of pain._

_"I can't," he whispered, strangled by his own breath, her hand clutching vice-like too-tight around his sensitive skin, feeling her muscles hold tight around his fingers, keeping him trapped and suffocating inside. "Bella… please… I can't… love, I can't, I can't…"_

_"You can," Bella goaded, torturing him with a thumb tracing the peachslit in his head. "Edward… just the tip… just touch me there with this – " another squeeze – "Just a little… just a taste."_

_Brokenbone tears filled Edward's eyes as he tried to deny her and failed, drowning in the knowledge that in the next moment he would break every promise he had ever made to himself, that his love, live, meaning were converging at a crossroads and – unknowing – by the breaking dawn, all three would be over._

_"I love you," he whispered desperately as he slipped his fingers from deep within her and her grip loosened around him and he fell, hanging, slack, ended. "I love you, I really love you… please don't forget that when I leave… I love you."_

_"I know you do," Bella whispered back, flying and alive, feeling the sharp press of his hipbones over hers, both of them too skinny. "I love you, too, Edward. So much."_

_The powderdry satincloth head of Edward's undoing touched lightly against Bella's open orchid lips and Edward jolted, electrified, floundering, lost, and knew that the string to his unraveling had been pulled._

- - - - -

She's looking at you with an intensity you wish you could keep forever and it pangs you with a bittersweet sea salt hurt that it will flee her in time and you can't look at her girlpretty face anymore.

With a sweet welling swell of venom mouth mouth finds her neck, the place where her pulse beats strongest, dark and pretty and making you dizzy with sweetwanting headiness and your tongue touches her skin, drawing her essence to the surface in exchange for a dark bruise, your mark on her – yours, not the bright-haired boy who's made her writhe.

"Oh!"

A small squeak escapes her and she doesn't say his name, doesn't call out for _ed-werd_, and you're giddy enough to grip too hard and your fingers press into her skin and softcrack bones and more of her blood and her soul and her life ebbs bruising to the surface and you smile to see the shape of your hands on her hips but her eyes are full of wet again, and you feel weighted and dark and you don't like that; you're hungry and needy and you want her wet between her legs instead and you bend down to suck kisses against the place where you've hurt her.

The whorled dark spots decay and darken when your death kisses them, and your green eyes flash on something sad at the sight of her pretty body losing light.

- - - - -

_"Oh, Edward," Bella cooed, wrapping her legs around Edward's slim hips, sliding his naked skin along her slick pink openness, feeling the satinsuede of his reluctance swelling and thrumming with blood and life and Edward shuddered through his shoulders, groaning softly into Bella's hair, knowing now how it felt to have his cock touching her pretty puss and painfully aware that in one tiny shift he could be pressing inside her._

_"Bella," he sighed, rumbling in his chest like a purr, "You were made for me. We were made to be like this."_

_And Bella shifted her hips._

_And Edward felt the forbidden welcoming press of his head against her opening, new and terrifying and falling into a well and Bella sighed, teeth tugging his earlobe, breath ghosting cold over his goosepimple skin:_

_"We were made to be like _this_."_

- - - - -

Edward's glass ghost had a soft mouth, wet with something cold and sweet that made my skin tingle like spearmint as his cherry-blossom tongue slipped up and over the skin my own Edward never dared to lick despite all my pleading. I gripped his flame-tipped hair in my hands to drive his face closer to me even as I felt the movement of his lips and tongue and nibblebiting teeth drinking me in deeper and deeper as though he had been starving since the beginning of time.

The brightsparkle collapse of my orgasm against Dream Edward's face stopped my heart for a moment and I saw myself float up out of my skin and stare down at the concave twisting brown-haired girl on the bed with her face and chest flushed red with boiling blood and eyes shut tight against her swollen broken fingers touching needily at her swollen nipples, a ghost – transparent and dark, a glowing David in marble, incorporeal and beautiful and frightening and monstrously angelic – with his face buried between her thighs, jaw wide to consume her and tongue working deep.

Dream Edward lifted his face before my muscles relaxed and my heart restarted his glowing green eyes met mine and his human wonderful crooked smile quirked his face as he met my gaze, floating in the air, and

_i  
wanted  
him_

and my heart fell with a thud as I met my liquidtrembling body again and realized:

I might love Edward more dead  
than I ever had alive.

- - - - -

_"Oh, Edward," Bella gasped, her teeth grinding against the pain she should have expected as the head of Edward's cock pressed forward, opening her, hurting her, too big for her unpracticed small space. The pain was welcome; for once, this was real, Edward really held his weight on his forearms at her sides and stretched her virgin skin, that this wasn't another dream._

_"I won't break you Bella, I won't, I can't, I won't," Edward's mumbles were a scattered suggestive rainbow array, scrambled thoughts and broken words. "Tell me to stop, I can't break you, I won't, I won't…" He groaned as the fat ridge at the bottom of his head popped against resistance and was engulfed in flame. "Oh…"_

_Bella smoothed a hand through Edward's soft hair, nails scratching against his scalp and he groaned again into her neck, arms shaking as he held himself above her. "Please don't stop." Edward moaned a crinkling soft cry as Bella's fingernails raking against the tender nape of his neck was too much to handle and before he was even really inside her he was lost, Bella's oversensitive nerves feeling every pulse of his warm white rush, and Edward collapsed, heavy and warm and pulse raging righteously as Bella let him seep inside softening, caressing his head gently,_

_aneurism beneath her fingers a ticking time bomb approaching  
zero._

_"It's okay."_

- - - - -

Satisfaction sustenance silken sweet strawberry symphonic seduction, sliding slick and strong and strident stealth into blinding blueblack bright pink perfect salvation.

Her body welcomes and warns, the burst of bright red blood a greedy delectable new sensation to your feeding –

The others had not given you the bittersweet thick syrupy gift, weight and body and beauty, when you took from them, and you smile –

Bella is special.

Your hips hit against hers long slow and deep with every selfish slurping thrust, warm and comfortable and suddenly with a longing that shatters you to the core you wish you could live here instead of beneath the cold porch, that you could spend all of your time touching and feeling this amazing girl; realization that she isn't Light, she's

_Home._

She's fluttering and squeezing and you're taking and slurping and consuming and scarring and she's cumming again, tight around you, and she moans, "_Edward_…"

And you _smile_ against her shoulder before your teeth take a tiny bite, drawing more beautiful blood into your mouth with the extraordinary taste of her soul, her life, drawing her spark into your skin –

"_Yes_."


	9. ego sentio valde tutus vobis

I am so, so sorry this took over a month to get out. It's a transition chapter between probably the two most important in the story, and I couldn't find the right words. I'm still not certain these are it.

**missmelly**, **juliejuliejulie**, **Kristen Nicole**, **lovepollution**, **contreplongee**, **ohyoudo**, and **AndraLee**: this one's for you. I'd probably give up if you -- and everyone else who reads and especially those who review -- didn't give me a reason to keep ripping out my heart for Bella and ed-werd.

* * *

You could cry If you understood crying, green eyes burning burning freezing with something like winter and you bury your face into her neck, lips breathing bruises into her skin as she shivers and draws icicles of heat down your back –

You are Edward, ed-werd, Her word.

She's never wanted her red-haired lover; She's never dreamt of never moaned for never cum to the boy who's dirtied Her bed: She's always wanted you, you, you.

You're sure of it.

You can feel it in Her quivering muscles.

You can hear it in Her tempest voice.

You take your fill and Her face is wet with salt and She's cooing for you turtledove curling chords for Edward.

And you're gone, flying through Her window,

exploding with

Light.

- - - - -

_Bella was intimidated to go to Port Angeles with Edward for their first real date._

_Edward had been to Paris._

_Edward had been to Chicago._

_Edward had been to Seattle._

_Bella had never gone anywhere, and besides, Edward was beautiful. Edward at thirteen had his braces removed and smiled with impossibly straight, white teeth; Edward at thirteen had longish, messy, thick bronze hair that infuriated Esme and ignited every girl in town between the ages of ten and twenty; Edward at thirteen suddenly grew four inches to nearly six feet tall, limbs beautifully long and gangly, outpacing everyone with his long stride._

_Charlie couldn't afford to get braces for Bella, and both daughter and father were too stubborn to accept orthodontia as a gift from the Cullens, so her two eyeteeth stood out, just a little, against the rest of her mouth like little fangs, and she was terribly self-conscious still._

_Alice kept trying to convince Bella to dye her hair, too, touting its mystical properties of self reinvention… and Bella finally caved, as she always did to either Cullen twin, and Alice painted long pink streaks into Bella's hair on either side of her face._

_Rather than gifting her confidence, Bella was grounded for nearly three weeks – Charlie forgot to formally lift her punishment after two, since he was almost never home – and she felt ridiculous, wishing for her plain brown hair to grow back after Lauren had called her "Baby Spice."_

_Alice didn't get called names despite her boyish black haircut and her stature as the shortest girl in their class. Bella felt shrimpier even though she stood two inches taller, because Alice lived large and everyone knew that she was cool because she said so._

_Edward called Bella 'cool.' But he called her 'pretty,' too, and even 'beautiful' once… and those endearments weren't true._

_All the same, she smiled at her reflection as Rosalie finished pinning back the pink streaks so that they framed her pale face; Alice insisted on lending Bella bobbypins lined with shining silver stars and she felt glamorous and so unlike Bella Swan._

_So much more like a Cullen._

_"You look plain gorgeous, Bella," Rosalie assured her, smiling softly with aged eyes at the young blushing girl before her, sitting with her eyes closed in front of the small, clean bathroom mirror in her small, clean house. Bella wore a plain blue-and-white sundress and a cream colored sweater that didn't match, but the eyelet trim was pretty and she wanted to feel pretty. "You're gonna dazzle that boy."_

_The little girl's cheeks flushed dark crimson in the mirror. No one had ever called her 'gorgeous,' and though she didn't believe it, the words soothed deliciously in her ears and tasted good in her mouth when she whispered it softly to herself as soon as Rosalie's back turned, intent on stitching up a tiny rip along the seam of her cardigan._

_"Gorgeous."_

- - - - -

I woke late into the sun burning a white trail across my bed from the window, and I rolled onto my stomach, hoping the pressure of my own weight would kill the nauseous roll and toothy bug clamped inside me, and wishing that I could go back to sleep and stay with Edward, my imaginary ghost-lover.

Edward was more beautiful than any human boy ever could be, with smoothglowing white skin and a cupid's arrow jaw and lips so soft and pink and pliant that I wanted them on me always. They tingled cold like mint against my skin, and left black bruises that I liked up and down the skin he kissed and sucked and touched. He made me his, boldly, and I liked it.

His neon green eyes saw right through me, burning through my skin to all of the shameful secrets I held beneath and turning them into power and prowess, making me feel like Mata Hari or Greta Garbo or Bettie Page, the strongest, sexiest women I never thought I could be. The sight of his eyes staring into mine as I floated above my own body, exorcised by orgasm, and their roguish, wondering wink making my lungs shrink even in memory, and the room swirled woozily in on me as I hyperventilated in my bed.

- - - - -

_When Edward saw Bella from his perch in the open cab of big Emmett's Jeep, his heart flew into his throat and his pants felt tighter._

_She looked like an ethereal fairy princess, all miles of white leg and pink cheeks, with softly waving oceans of brown curls floating on the warm summer breeze around her face. The damned pink streaks weren't nearly so noticeable now that a few weeks had passed, and somehow tonight the cotton candy strands looked gossamer and petalsoft natural instead of forced and false and all things he dissociated from Bella, his sweetheart._

_Her dress was modest, but ended above her knees, exposing long smooth legs that Edward knew one day he could touch and kiss, but that day was not today._

_He wished it were._

_Her lacy cardigan seemed taunting and adult, little glimpses of skin showing through the floral pattern of the yolk and cap sleeves, and her tiny breasts were framed like a heart inside the three open buttons at the top. Edward felt his cheeks warm at the sight of Her, his Bella, his date, maybe his girlfriend, the woman he wanted to spend all his life with and to marry and to see carry his children._

_She caught sight of him leaning out of the side of the Jeep and she smiled, biting her lip like the dirty pictures Jasper shared with Edward in secret a few months back and that he kept hidden in brown paper beneath the mattress of his bed._

_"Bella," Edward sighed, bounding out of the open side of the big red Jeep and holding out both arms to hug her._

_She was a tentative fawn in her affections, stepping up to wrap her arms around him with the weight of moths' wings, the front of her body pressed so lightly against every electrified inch of Edward that he could have cried, and didn't understand why._

- - - - -

You are the fairytale prince Her childhood mind envisioned when she thought the word 'Kiss': She thought of your green eyes and your white teeth and your pink lips, you know it, you know it; in Her mind, kisses have always meant your worship of Her lips and the way She feeds you life so sweetly.

She imagined your fingers and your lips the first time She came, her own timid fingers coaxing confused the sweet nectar you love from between her legs and your wild abandon in her mind, reckless and needy and focused fulcrum on her, making her want, making her twist and flipturnbeautifulcome.

When her redheaded littleboy lover poked his fingers inside Her the first time She was craving for you, wanting your freedom your knowledge your deathly desire for Her body mind and soul, and you do, you  
want Bella –

And for the first time you know that She wants you, too.

And you  
Care.

- - - - -

I regained consciousness slowly, willing myself to stay asleep and gone because that was when Edward came for me, and

_I  
wanted  
him._

I vaguely discerned that when he was alive, edward existed and treated me nicely, with worshipful trying fingers and sweet eyes filled with shame, and I knew that once upon a time, I had felt him inside me thick and white, but I had never known what it was like to have edward fill me because he was too crippled, flaccid with fear.

Edward made me whole.

I shifted from my stomach onto my side, relieving the pressure on my abdomen and feeling a pang between my legs, and when I reached down, I found blood with my fingertips, and sudden freezing panicked relief flooded me because something was so, so very wrong but I couldn't bring myself to care because edward and Edward had both been inside me last night, I knew it, I could tell from the spill of my own blood and the bite of cold that I remembered flooding me, collapsing like a vacuum, making my heart palpitate and I felt a little light, a little biting nipping life, die inside me.

I spread my hand over my stomach and the other curled over a breast, letting my fingers feel the remnants of edward beneath one palm and Edward beneath the other, feeling sweat gather on my skin beneath the blankets that still smelled of them; I willed myself back to sleep.

- - - - -

_Port Angeles was a small city – a little rough around the edges and nothing impressive._

_Edward cringed inside when Emmett's Jeep roared into a faded parking space, proudly bearing its decrepit meter: a mark of metropolitan progress, in front of the nicest restaurant Edward could afford._

_He wanted so much more from this night and for his girl than he could find and give. He wanted more than flickerdying neon and sticky checkered tablecloths and was deeply embarrassed by the tacky wicker-wrapped grappa bottles, suggestively dripping with white candle wax, that stood drunkenly peglegged on their little reserved round table._

_He pulled Bella's chair out for her and her cheeks flushed with the pink blush he loved as she smiled sweetly at him over her shoulder, and Edward's heart sank that he couldn't make her first date as beautiful as she was._

_Bella felt small and plainjane as dapper Edward in his navy blue suitcoat held open his hand at the curb outside the restaurant, Emmett's open-air Jeep purring beside the shining chrome box he called a "parking meter" and that Bella recognized from photos of New York City._

_He led her, smiling softly, into the restaurant lit with dim, romantic red light bulbs and gave their name to the hostess as "Cullen" like it was nothing, and Bella's heart sank a little wondering if maybe it really were nothing, because the blonde girl who led them to their little round table couldn't have been more than three years older than they and she smiled at Edward with a lush edge that Bella knew she would never really master._

_She wanted to be a Cullen so badly. She envied the closeness Alice and Edward had to handsome Carlisle, and how whenever they drove through town together in Carlisle's convertible, everyone smiled and approved of the head of the Cullen house, even adored him. She never missed the fact that while adults respected her own father and the widows and old maids of Forks plied him with pies and pickled beets, everyone her own age – and many of the other men – sneered when they passed his cruiser._

_Even when the lights weren't flashing and he was just taking his daughter to school._

_Bella's secret deepest want was to have a brother or a sister, the way Edward and Alice had each other. She wanted a secret silent language like the one the twins perfected. She wanted comfortable camaraderie. She wanted confidence._

_Mostly she wanted to be a Cullen because it was enough for Esme to decide to stay, while being a Swan made her own mother leave._

- - - - -

You smile because Bella is sleeping again and you can feel Her pulling you towards the bed where She lays, wanting you desperately with sweet tangy blood where you've never tasted it before and want it most and long pretty legs that wrap around your hipbones and little secrets you think no one has known about Her except you –

One inner pink lip has a tiny freckle, and you kissed it and found it a compass rose to pull her orgasm from her with your teeth –

Her first and favorite kisses happened outdoors beneath the rare and warm  
sun.

You scowl suddenly when the place where your stomach should be clenches in something like fear because She loves sun, She loves Light and the only thing you can give her is this dark mouldering place beneath the white lattice porch where –

You sit up suddenly and the top of your head strikes the wood, blistering a dark hole in its knots –

A pair of eyes is staring right at you through the diamontine pattern in the wood; wide and hazel and not belonging to Bella and full of the overripe smell like your own that infuriates and terrifies you and gazing at your form like you're something monstrous and strange and something twists in your abdomen because you can smell traces of Bella on this girl and you don't want her to tell Bella whatever it is she sees beneath the white porch.

"Edward?"

The girl's voice is small and incredulous and fits her round little face and sets a pang behind your ribs like palm fronds and salt and double-helix twisting thoughts and you cringe away from her further into the darkness because you suddenly feel tied down with lead weights like you should stay away from Bella and this girl this creature this little half-a-soul could know it and you need for her to forget that she's ever seen you so she doesn't realize what you did to Her.

The pinched white face doesn't disappear. "I knew I saw you, Edward. I knew it."

Her sounds are foreign but her tone is clear –

She doesn't mind that you're there in the dark because she needs you almost as much as Bella does.

You smile into the damp dirt of your home, knowing you'll never hurt her, and she won't tell Bella to stay away because that would hurt your Bella.

- - - - -

_The hostess led the two to a family-sized table in the middle of the room. Bella could see couples much older than she and Edward scattered all around the main room, and families that reminded her of less refined Cullens or a more refined Rosalie, Emmett, and Jasper, crowded into booths around the wooden walls._

_The hostess ushered them into a plain table, covered with its checkerboard oilcloth, and Bella could have swooned with how romantic it was, just like the lady and the tramp._

_"Would you like to place your drink orders now, or when the rest of your party arrives?"_

_The blonde addressed Edward, dismissing Bella completely._

_It struck the brunette suddenly, and she wished that Rosalie hadn't pinned back her pink bangs so she could hide behind them:_

_The hostess thought she was Edward's sister._

_It made more sense than to believe someone like Edward would be here on a date with someone like Bella, the daughter of a civil servant, with the rip in her cardigan hastily sewn up with mismatched thread and with stupid pink streaks in her hair like some little kid playing dress-up while Edward stood beside the chair he pulled out for her in his tailored blue blazer and black button-down shirt over his lanky chest and pressed pants over his long legs that made him so tall and masculine already._

_Edward smiled winsomely. "Actually, if it's alright, I think we'd prefer something a little more intimate."_

_Bella gaped as he held out the hand not clutched around her waist, casually tucking a ten-dollar bill into the hostess' slack hand. She had never seen anyone other than Carlisle know so slickly how to bend society to his will, and the kernel of her heart felt even smaller and more insignificant as she stood so cloddish beside Edward's grace._

_Edward pulled Bella's seat out for her and held her hand as she slid into the seat. He smiled shyly down at her as she blushed and bit her lip, adjusting the bell of her dress around her legs, and without thinking, Edward smoothed his hand over her hair, completely certain that she was the most beautiful girl in the world that night._

_"Perfect," he murmured under his breath, then quickly bit the inside of his cheek, because Alice had warned him that Bella was evidently completely oblivious to his feelings and thought that his sincere compliments and eagerness for the night was just his humoring her because she lived next door and they'd known each other so long and she was his little twin sister's best friend._

_Edward sat down across the small table, admiring the way the flickering yellow light from the candle resting on their table in its green bottle played against Bella's delicate features, painting chiaroscuro shadow and highlight over her bones and beneath her long eyelashes._

_Her lower lip was trembling._

_"Are you alright, Bella?" Edward asked finally, reaching timidly across the table to take her hand into his, hoping against hope that she would give it to him. "You look nervous."_

_Bella shook her head, beautiful pink that forced Edward's hand to lift without his consent to cup her cheek gently against his palm as he stroked the bone with his thumb, to fill her cheeks. She smiled tremulously._

_The blonde hostess set two glasses of water and two Cokes that Bella couldn't recall Edward ordering down in front of them._

_She squeezed Edward's hand. "I feel very safe with you."_


	10. Ars Moriendi

**An Author's Note on the return of _Ars Moriendi_ and other writings by me**

Between AM's last update (in November of 2009) and now, a lot of things have happened in my personal life that have made the particular plotline of _Ars Moriendi _very difficult, if not impossible for now, to write. I feel selfish claiming a hiatus based on grief when my experiences don't match the pain that other wonderful Twilight FF writers have pushed through and continued faithfully posting their stories during, but obviously, my creative well for _Ars Moriendi _has taken a deep hit.

I have been working on the story (as of today, May 11, 2010) I have over 1k of the next chapter finished, and I'm anticipating the complete chapter being around 4k (a little longer than previous chapters of AM, but mostly in line with them), but I can make no promises or guarantees of when it will be done.

I do plan on finishing the story as a debt of gratitude to the readers who have shown _Ars Moriendi _so much love in the last year, but I will likely be abridging the story by five chapters, so it will be 15 in total and not 20. Again, I have no schedule for posting this and I cannot promise that it will be posted quickly or with any regularity.

When I first started writing AM, I posted weekly, and then biweekly, and I wish that I could tell you that I would be able to go back to that sort of disciplined posting, but I can't. If you think that seems ungrateful in light of how much devotion other Twilight FF writers and readers have generously put towards AM, then I apologize, and I do understand, but the emotional outpouring that is writing a chapter of AM is not something that I can, or in light of the last few months _should_, force.

I am particularly thankful to Tiffany at Fictionista's Workshop, everyone at Edwardville on LiveJournal, Juliejuliejulie, CindyWindy, Rochelle Allison, and ohyoudo for your kind words.

I hope to be back soon.

-K

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